0 (2s):
Light that spark Fire Nation. JLD here with an audio master class on success through being a true underdog and to drop these value bombs. I have brought Jayson Waller on the mic. He was a trailer park living high school dropout before he became the founding CEO of Power Home Solar. One of the most successful private companies in America and the host of his own podcast, true underdog, where he shares stories to inspire millions around the world and foundation. Today, we'll be talking about why you need to train your mind to be calm in every situation, how you have to take a shot in order to get over your fears and so much more. When we get back from taking our sponsor, customers want more from brands.

0 (45s):
Delivering more means owning the customer experience, taking control over data acquisition analysis, creative and delivery, Klaviyo calls, this owned marketing, and they believe it's the best path to growth for more visit Klaviyo.com/fire that's KLAVIYO.com/fire. Online training is skyrocketing across every industry and thousands of entrepreneurs just like us are using Thinkific to create market and sell online courses, launch your own online course and share your knowledge with the world today. Get started at Thinkific.com/EOF that's THINKIFIC.com/EOF. Jayson say what's up the Fire Nation.

0 (1m 25s):
And what is something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with?

1 (1m 31s):
What's up Fire Nation. Thanks for having me John on here. I think one of the things that I really believe in to be successful as an 80 20 rule, you know, when you're building a business or you're managing a team, you know, I've, I've built three companies from the ground up and, and, and I've learned so many things that I failed at and that I struggled at to where I've kind of mastered this 80 20 rule where I believe 20% of our staff does 80% of the work and the next 60% do the 20%. So I challenge each one of our directors. Our company has a little North of 1700 employees and about 20 directors, I have them replace 20% of their staff every month. Now some months a department might be 30% and then the next month 10.

1 (2m 12s):
But the goal is to put the KPIs on there and hold everyone accountable to their scorecard. I don't care what they do. They can be customer service, sales installation. There are measurables there that we can find out that we lay out for those individuals. And then really it's a case by case scenario because when people's shelf life expires, they, they're not only there for a check. And in order to grow, you got to bring a new blood, new excitement to keep the culture fresh. And you got to keep moving those Gazelles to the front of the line and the ones at the bottom, you just got to replace insurance because, you know, if we want it to be the post office, then we wouldn't want to hire people or eliminate people, right? They're not growing right. They're they're flatline. But if you want to grow a business like a rocket ship, like Amazon, like power home, like what we're doing, you have got to churn and burn those bottom ones that are only holding everyone else back

0 (2m 56s):
Doggy dog. And this is success by our nation through being a true underdog. And I gave a little bit of a tease, Jayson, about your story during the introduction, but man, your upbringing, it's quite an astounding story. Share that with us.

1 (3m 12s):
My dad's from Michigan. He never finished high school. And my mom's from North Carolina. She didn't finish high school. They met when he was 17 and she was six. No, he was 18 and she was 16 and they got married. And then they had me in Arizona when he was 20 and she was 18. And so neither one of them finished high school. They worked blue collar hard and jobs. My dad worked at an at and T plant. My mom really did, you know, bakery at Fry's and stuff like that. And I had a younger brother and sister, my dad got transferred and I watched him not take an opportunity to open his own business with a friend. He stayed, which is nothing wrong with that. But he stayed blue collar. He stayed, he played to not win.

1 (3m 52s):
He played did not, not lose. If that makes sense. I like to play to win. He played to not lose. He played safe and he kept his job at, he transferred North Carolina where we moved into a trailer park and I didn't know what a trailer park was. Then I know that I grew up a little less than middle-class. You know, the, the nice neighborhood was a few miles down the road where there was a golf course. We didn't have any golf course or anything like that. But when I moved into the trailer park, I would go to school at North Carolina. And I had fake Tommy Hilfiger is, you know, around the same age. And Tommy Hilfiger was, was, was the swag when we were in high school and I would go to a flea market or, you know, and buy these fake Tommy Hilfiger and people would call me out mostly females at school.

1 (4m 33s):
Like, why are you wearing a fake Tommy? And so my first car was 300 bucks. I helped my dad deliver papers at night. I just had this hard work ethic that whatever I could do to better myself, I tried to do that. And I ended up falling in love. I'm married with four kids now and a grandkid, but I've married my high school sweetheart. And we had a kid in our teens. I was 17 turned 18. She was 16 turning 17. I didn't finish high school. I didn't go to college, but I was always hungry. And I worked my tail off, but my goal was to, to really just be positive and find a way to make an impact. And slowly but surely I was able to build something up that was worse.

0 (5m 9s):
Now, while you were building that thing up, did you find that there is a stigma and there was a stigma for you attached to not going to a college?

1 (5m 17s):
Yeah. So funny that you asked that I recently won the entrepreneur of the year award and I was, I don't know who nominated me and I'm glad that they did, but I had no idea it was a big deal. And you know, I know how to grow business. I just learned what EBITDA was a couple of years ago and I'm not kidding. And our company did 385 million in sales and revenue this year. And we'll do 700 million in 2021. But we, I didn't understand any there's things that when I went to the Y entrepreneur seminar to meet with the judges to really pitch myself, I wasn't even going to go. And a buddy of mine is like, this is a big deal. Like, you know, Draymond on shark tank won this award that you need to go. And I'm like, okay, I guess I'll.

1 (5m 57s):
So I went there and I'm doing what everybody else is doing. And the, and the lady Chevy who's running the program there in the Southeast is sitting with a city with me. And I said, Hey, look, this is when the basketball player from Duke Zion Williamson was electing to maybe go back to Duke because he didn't want to be drafted by the pelicans. That was the rumors. And it was on ESPN. So as all these entrepreneur of the year on a razor, walking around with all these judges, all of them got college education, all these things, right? Not that it matters to me now, but while I'm talking to her, I said, Oh, they're going to go back to Duke. She goes, well, is that where you went to college was Duke? I said, Oh, no, I didn't go to college. She said, Oh, you're the one. I said, the one, what?

1 (6m 38s):
You're the one that nominated, that never finished high school or college. So I knew the next day when I had those interviews, I had to use that to my advantage. And so I went in to two different rooms with 10 judges in each room and I dropped the mic. I told them why I should be entrepreneur of the year, how I bootstrapped, how hard work and failure have gotten me to where I'm at now that I didn't need to go to college. Nobody gave me a silver spoon. I worked my butt off. And I explained that I was very passionate about what I'm doing, you know, solar and a movement and change in the world and allowing people to own their power. They were clapping and chest bumping me. I knew I had it in the bag. And a few months later when they announced the winner I won. So it was exciting.

0 (7m 15s):
That is fantastic. Now let's go move forward a little bit because your company power home solar and ended its first year with 30 employees, which is legitimate with $3 million in sales, which is legitimate. But you posted a loss of a million dollars, even though you signed up 1800 customers, which is a ton. So looking back now, you have a lot more experience, a lot more knowledge, et cetera, et cetera. But what would you have done differently in that first year?

1 (7m 39s):
I would have really been more involved on all aspects of the business. That's where I kind of got that 80 20 rule was, you know, I, I learned a lot of things in the, in the first two companies, I was a part of your good things and bad things, right? Cause you don't learn unless you fail. So you got to make mistakes and doing this. It's a construction business. And I wasn't used to paying all this money where you've got to pay for marketing. You got to pay for part of a sales rep and all these things before getting paid. I wasn't used to that as a cashflow nightmare. And that first year I ended up selling my house on the Lake and putting all my money that I ever made in this home security business back into it. And I wasn't getting a paycheck for almost 19 months when we first opened till till month 20 is when I first got my paycheck.

1 (8m 24s):
I struggled with that. And I think my advice to people would be, you can do more research and have the cashflow if you're gonna open something up because you know, it was hard. And people think when they open a business, they're going to make a ton of money and everything's going to happen overnight. They're going to be rich and really you're paid nothing. And then you're paid the least amount. And then you got to grow that one step at a time to where you can be successful. And I learned that the hard way, but it's really what gave me the strength and ability to grow our company. Now whether we do 400 million in sales or a billion in sales, my pay is virtually the same. Everything's re investing into the company. And when you have that mindset and you're not getting a paycheck and you can be disciplined to invest into the company. I think if I learned that earlier, I wasn't getting a check anyways.

1 (9m 5s):
But if I, if I would have been able to manage money earlier and make some of those changes, understanding, we wouldn't have had a loss the first two years

0 (9m 13s):
Now, you're a big believer in getting rid of those bottom churners people that are just dragging the company down and like, you know, getting around 20% out every single month, at least, you know, based on those KPIs, those key performance indicators. What are your thoughts on the flip side about how so many companies? And I was actually in one back in my twenties that promote people to like a level of incompetence. Like they have a great guy in sales and because he's so great in sales, he's number one or she's number one, they promote that person to manager and they're just a terrible manager. And it seems like that happens where all of a sudden you look right? Like these people were great, one level below, but they're terrible where they're at and it's hurting the whole company. Do you, do you see that in companies, do you believe in that philosophy?

0 (9m 54s):
Like what do you do to avoid it? If so,

1 (9m 56s):
So we grow within, but we have felt exactly what you're talking about. The top salesperson or the top installer is not the best manager or best leader. And we learned the hard way. And I'm a big believer being in corporate America, where I was passed up on promotion, whether it be age, race, sex, whatever I never wanted that I wanted to grow within. So, you know, we have around 1700, a little over 1700 employees, about 400 of them are in sales. And 400 Marines are in production, installs. Every one of our regionals, our directors, our project managers, our district managers, our assistant district managers all started from the bottom, but we lived through the pains of wow.

1 (10m 37s):
John, you're such a great sales rep. We're make your manager, Oh man, you're pooping the bed here we are. Now we can't go backwards. I just lost a great employee. We lived through that. What we did is we hired a whole training division in our company that works and trains people that are great employees that are passionate, that believe in what we're doing, how to be a manager, how to measure KPIs, how to have structure, how to hold people accountable. And so we have this evolving training and development team in power home that goes and works with these new leaders. So they have to take all these seminars over and over in classes. That's how we have to do it because I believe you need to promote within, unless you like. Cause I'm not a big believer in resumes. I didn't go to school and all that stuff.

1 (11m 18s):
So unless you need someone in HR or accounting, I like to hire con because they're hungry. They love what we do. They have great culture. They're super excited. They're passionate. Those are the people we want to build around that are team players that can grow and we can teach them the skill sets to be a manager, if they're willing to learn. And that's what that whole training development center, the whole team we call it. The power home university works with them because even me, I this is my third time running a company, but I never ran a company that 300 million in sales, I am in waters. I'm not used to, I'm getting coached every day. I'm learning things every day, how to be bigger and better. And so I lead by example that I'm willing to do that. And that I'm humble enough to say, I don't know everything. I got to hire smarter people and take courses and have a CEO coach.

1 (12m 1s):
The employees see that. And they feed off that, especially if they want to become a leader. And that's kinda how we get to the next level.

0 (12m 7s):
You need to realize that too, like the person that brought your company to a million, it may not be the person to take you to 10 million. And then once you get to a 10 million, yeah, it might not be the person to take it to a hundred million. You need to be aware of this stuff and, you know, act accordingly. And we are going to talk about training our minds to be calm in every situation. When we get back from thinking our sponsors, as the COVID-19 pandemic has changed how we do business and how we make money, entrepreneurs are moving to online courses more than ever. And you can quickly pivot and create an impactful course for your business, with Thinkific, the best platform to create market and sell an online course with Thinkific. You get total control over the structure, price, and content of your online courses. Plus you don't have to be tech savvy to get started.

0 (12m 48s):
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0 (13m 28s):
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0 (14m 19s):
That's KLAVIYO.com/fire. Jayson. We are back and you're a big believer in the phrase, train your mind to be calm in every situation. How did you apply this mentality when it would have been easier just to panic and flip out?

1 (14m 36s):
I think, you know, when you have, when you grow up the way I grew up, you know, my parents were uneducated. There was a little bit of verbal and physical abuse as a child. You, you don't, you become tough things. Don't move your shake, you or scare you. Like they would normal people, a lot of computation growing up and a lot of struggles and it's hard. And, and, you know, my parents worked hard, but they also, they, they they're better grandparents than they are parents. I'll say that. Okay. And I love them to death, but that gave me this thick skin and, and mentality and ability to not freak out. And I almost love the pressure and the challenge of being pushed. You know, if it's too comfortable, I'm going to get bored.

1 (15m 18s):
And during this pandemic, this was scary for everybody. This wasn't like it was a power home thing or a USA thing. This was a, a world issue. And nobody knew what tomorrow held and nobody knew what was going on. And I have great leadership around me. You know, our president, Steve Murphy and Kevin Clink. Who's our CMO. You know, the Steve Murphy is an older guy, lean on for wisdom, but he even panicked in this situation when these things are going on, where we are on the calls with attorneys and HR and lawyers, just for health reasons that we're talking to the state legislators of what we can do. And can we stay open? I decided, look, we're going to stay open and we're going to take ourselves off payroll indefinitely until further notice it ended up being almost four months and we're going to give a place as long as customers still want the product and employees aren't scared and need to provide for their families.

1 (16m 9s):
Take in mind, this is before any kind of unemployment package came out for people. We didn't know what was gonna happen. We had over 800 employees at that time. So we weren't going to get anything anyways, but I didn't want to shut down for Lucy. Who's in customer service and she's got to buy diapers for a kid or Mike. Who's an installer. And he's the only provider. And they got to pay rent and hopefully their solar bill, not their power bill. I didn't want to shut down for those folks. So, you know, it was a tough, hard conversation with a lot of fear. And I told the executives, you got to, you got to have trust. You got to trust me, we're going to get through this. We got to show leadership. We can't show any fear. We went to offices, we videotaped us at offices. We were being, you know, we are proactive with the pandemic. We were staying six feet away. We were wearing masks, but we were showing, look, you can still work.

1 (16m 51s):
And things are okay. And because we did that and we shared with them that we are going off payroll to stay open for them. We had other leaders in the company wanting to volunteer some of their commissions or bonuses to stay open. And, you know, it took off and we doubled in size during the pandemic. And, you know, we only had to close one office up for two weeks. And because we were able to save that money, we're able to pay all those employees full pay for those two weeks. They didn't have to burn their vacation. So, you know, I think when, when, when people are, are working for someone or you're playing on a team, when you see your leader, your coach, your manager, your CEO be fearless, and they're able to do that. You can entrust them to take you to battle and finish what they need to do. You gotta have that.

1 (17m 32s):
If not, then you're doubting what you're doing there, and you're not able to be successful. And you're just gonna crumble when things challenge us. And I love challenges. So I hate that this happened and what we're going through, but I love that our team bonded together and we got stronger because of it

0 (17m 45s):
Stronger because of it. And Jayson, I love your quote. You have to take a shot in order to get over that fear. So let's tell a story. What's the biggest shot that you've taken this led to your success.

1 (18m 0s):
So you talked about 2015, our first year open, where we made 3 million in sales, but we lost a million dollars. I had a, I was with my wife and kids at Disney, and I probably shouldn't have been on that, that vacation because we didn't have any money. I wasn't getting paid, but I already paid for it a while back. And I remember being, you know, big alligator tears in my eyes telling my wife, I think we got to close the doors and I've never really failed. I've never quit anything. I mean, I have failed, but I've never quit. If I failed. I learned. And then I kept coming and I kept coming. And for the first time in my life, I was like, I don't have an answer. This is something I love with solar. And we can't make money. We are cashflow negative. This is so hard.

1 (18m 41s):
And so I said, what do I do? Do I shut down? I mean, and my wife's like, you gotta pray about it. And I thought about it and I prayed about it. And I came in with, with everything I had and I told my wife, we're selling our house on the Lake. We're going to downsize and pay cash. That's what we did. She gave me the stink eye, but I said, trust me, I got a bet on myself. If I can't bet on myself, nobody also bet on me. I have to do this. And so I went in with the little over million dollars on top of the million dollars already gave the company in 2015 back into the company, beginning of 16. That's when I started firing a bunch of people that weren't doing their job that were just riding it for a paycheck. That's where the 80 20 kicked in. And then I started making the phone calls, running the sales appointments, holding the project meetings, helping order inventory, doing customer service.

1 (19m 23s):
I started to do everything myself. I went from 30 to like 12 employees and then rebuilt it back up and tried to get them to believe in me and enroll them to be believe in power home. And then so really, I bet on myself and double down right there. And that was the scariest thing sold my house. Every dollar I've ever made in the, in the previous business, back into this, no paycheck betting on me to get through it. And you know, I wouldn't change a thing. It made me stronger. It made me appreciate what I've got, but it makes me the fighter. I am today for our brand, for our employees, for our company. It makes me not scared of anything when your back's against the wall and you've got to downsize your house and you're not getting a paycheck. You got to look at your wife and kids and all these employees and they lean on you.

1 (20m 5s):
I love it. And I felt like, because I stayed the course and I didn't quit. I was able to come out of it. Okay.

0 (20m 12s):
You are a fighter and you also host a top five entrepreneurship podcast called true underdog in your company's approaching IPO. I mean a lot of things going on. What's the long-term vision. Like now that you've gone from a true underdog to a true American success story, what's that long-term vision look like?

1 (20m 33s):
You know, I love helping people. The podcast thing, I started as kind of a hobby and it took off and I've been blessed. I had you on the show. I've had some great guests on the show that have really helped propel the brand. And I just, I get, I get excited about when I hear from a random stranger, that's like, Hey man, I heard your show. And this really helped me do this. Or, Hey, I heard your show and I added another truck to, to do their car detailing. I hear those stories and it makes me feel great. I get those feelings at work. When we hear a director or a sales manager, an installer bias, first home, we love. And we celebrate that. But when you hear a random stranger do that, they're like, telly, there appreciate that you can't buy that. That feeling feels wonderful that you can help random people.

1 (21m 16s):
That's the goal here. So in the next three, five, seven years, I plan on being a power home as long as they'll keep me, right. I, I love it. I love what we're doing. I love the movement we're building, but I also love helping people. So I want to continue to do the podcast. I've got a book coming out. I don't have a title yet. It's coming out in the summer, but I want to just share those tidbits. So if there's somebody, female, male that are struggling, that are just one moment away from closing the doors, like I almost did, or one, you know, one moment away from just giving up what they think they are capable of. I want them to hear some of my stories, some of my experiences, and maybe it just gives them enough courage enough strength to take the next step, to really get to the next level. Because that's what it's about. Tell too many people quit too early.

1 (21m 56s):
And if we could just push them a little bit more, I think that's my ultimate goal. Going into the future is continuing to do that.

0 (22m 1s):
Jayson, you dropped value bomb after value bomb today. So give us the one key takeaway that you want to make sure our audience gets from all the awesomeness that you shared today.

1 (22m 11s):
Oh, thanks so much, John. I appreciate that. Well, I would say that, listen, don't doubt yourself. And don't go into this world. Having no confidence. If you're not going to bet on yourself, nobody's going to bet on you. That's impersonal life and that's in business or jobs or sports. That's the facts. You know, if you want to ask somebody out or be in a relationship, but you have zero confidence and you have a lot of insecurities, that's not going to work. If you want to open a business or be a leader or a manager, and you are very insecure and you're not confident, that's not going to work. You have to practice in the mirror. You have to believe it. You have to love yourself and bet on yourself before anybody else will. And if you do those things and you stay strong, success doesn't mean you make millions of dollars.

1 (22m 52s):
Success means you're filling that hole that you need. You could, you could make $25,000 a year. If you're happy and you're helping people and yourself you're successful. And that's the key in order to get to those spots. You want to be in life. You can't quit on yourself. You got to bet on yourself and you got to have confidence to get there.

0 (23m 10s):
Bet on yourself. So Jayson, let us know what's going on in your world right now. Give us any call to action or way that we can connect with you that you'd like. And then we'll say goodbye.

1 (23m 20s):
Thank you so much. So, you know, you can go to 200 dog.com to check out the podcast we're on iHeart, Spotify, Apple, all of them, YouTube. You can go to PowerHome.com to see about our company. You go to JaysonWaller.com. I'm working on some speaking stuff and a book, Instagram it's @jaysonwaller, bam and Facebook. It's Jayson Waller,

0 (2s):
Fire Nation. You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

0 (23m 41s):
You've been hanging out with J dubs in JLD. So keep up that heat head over to EO, fire.com type Jayson in the search bar, JAYSON and his show notes page will pop up with everything that we've been talking about. Best show notes in the biz. And of course take all the calls to action that Jayson just shared as well. I mean his podcast. Fantastic, true underdog. I was on it. It was a great show. And Jayson, I wanna say thank you, man, for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today, for that we salute you and we will catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation today's value bomb content was brought to you by Jayson and I've created a treasure trove of free courses for you.

0 (24m 25s):
I teach you how to podcast or a mastermind create funnels that actually convert and so much more. All you need to do is visit EOFire.com/resources to start learning today. EOFire.com/resources. I'll catch you there. Fire Nation, or I'll catch you on the flip side. Customers want more from brands. Delivering more means owning the customer experience, taking control over data acquisition analysis, creative and delivery, Klaviyo calls, this owned marketing, and they believe it's the best path to growth for more visit Klaviyo.com/fire. That's KLAVIYO.com/fire. Online training is skyrocketing across every industry and thousands of entrepreneurs just like us are using Thinkific to create market and sell online courses, launch your own online course and share your knowledge with the world today.

0 (25m 13s):
Get started at Thinkific.com/EOF that's THINKIFIC.com/EOF.