Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Jayson Waller: Find Your Power | Entrepreneurship | E78

Episode Date: August 31, 2020

The 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 [e-mail] 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/

Hey guys, it's Hala. As our loyal listeners know, my absolute favorite way to kick off the show is to read the reviews we're getting on Apple, cast box, YouTube, or any platform that lets you leave a review. This week, I'm sharing a five-star review from Belinda Fung and Canada. If you haven't checked out Young and Profiting Podcast, I highly recommend that you do. Hala is a fantastic interviewer and an impressive conversation navigator. Her questions dive deep into many topics, including entrepreneurs. worship and emotional intelligence. I came across this podcast by Fluke, and what a blessing.

I've listened to one episode every morning since I found it, and I always look forward to the new ones. If you're on the fence, just check it out. There's so much value in this podcast, and I hope more people get benefit from it. Thank you so much, Belinda, for listening. And to everyone out there, I'd love to know what your favorite episode is and why. The best way to do this is to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite platform. And if you can't leave a review, share your thoughts on social. Tag us at Yap with Hala on Instagram or Hala Taha on LinkedIn. I'll definitely reshare the post and I can't wait to hear what you think about the show. You are listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and

profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halitaha, 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 from my guests by doing the proper research and asking the right questions. If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of ex-FBI agents, real estate moguls,

self-made billionaires, CEOs, and bestselling 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 and Profiting Podcast. Today on the show, we're chatting with Jason Waller, the CEO of Power Home Solar, America's new superpower and 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 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 love 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 superpower in home energy. And you launched in 2014, and now you have over 1,000 employees. You operate in over 10 states. And you've also been named one of the top 100 fastest growing private companies in the U.S. 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 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, 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 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. Blue Collar America. My mom worked at 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

babysat 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, 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, you know, have decent clothes and have a roof over our head. And, you know, growing up, I saw my parents struggle. And I, you know, I always had goals either be a football player or a sports agent or an attorney or something. And I was really good at math. But, you know, I had this knack of talking and ideas and vision. early on trying to motivate the kids what we can do we'd play a game called like goonies the movie

goonies came out when i was a kid so we'd play goonies and we'd set up how to get out of traps but you know as i grew older i started to see my parents really struggle my dad filed bankruptcy multiple times you know he was bad with money when he made money and i saw that we'd move a lot i mean i you know 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 you know 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 blockbuster still open, but back in the late 80s, early 90s, video stores were booming. And that was the VHS tapes. And my first job at 14 was working at that

video store, putting away movies and putting Rocky 4 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 had 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 sherry, a bakery right next to one of the video stores, stay here. My dad said, no, you know, 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, you know, 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 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 things like that miss out on his kid's stuff because he's working so much. I saw that opportunity when I moved, you know, we moved North Carolina that I didn't want to ever go through that. that if I could find a way in that horse road by, I was going to 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 are 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. You know, I came from Phoenix. I joined this little gang. I was a gangbanger wannabe. You know, the white kids were really kind of redneck and country and the black kids were cool, but they didn't 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. You know, a buddy of mine came from Louisiana. Another buddy came from California. Another buddy came from Kansas. You know, we all lived in the trailer park together. 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's very good at math. But I had a mouth on me. I didn't like authority figures. I struggled with listening to people when I thought it was wrong. And I got in a lot of fights. because I never started a fight. I never bullied anybody, but I was always like, all right,

so I got in a lot of fights, and that got me in trouble out of school. And so I kind of got kicked out and started working. And when I did that, you know, as a young man, I got my girlfriend who's now my wife pregnant. And, you know, 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.

She's 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 Hill figures. 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 how 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's 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 it kind of motivated me. And I got into sales. When I went back to Arizona in 97, I went there and was going to try to go back to school or figure things out. And I had my friend Joey Costaneta, 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 Klinke, who's my business partner now. He was selling credit card protection

on telemarketing, and he was 17 years only, he was making $4,500 a week part-time, and this is a 97. So I said, I can do that. I can hustle with the best of them. So I went, meet him, would compete for first and second, make great money. Then we start selling home security over the phone for about a month. 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, Allah, 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 running 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 and install. It's a 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 park kid. I don't on the phone, I can, I can be an act as if I can, I can empower myself to be something different and really use my voice. 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 a job at first union. I wasn't supposed to get. I adjusted my resume, said I graduated college. I didn't. Got a job there anyways. 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, you know, that made a difference and started to learn sales. So 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. Yeah. Well, that's incredible. It just shows the value of using your grit 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 that 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 because I was insecure, right? I struggled because I felt they're smarter than me and I'm telling them what to do or they're looking to 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 and 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 are like, I'm not going to be here. And I told him 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 older. I didn't give a shit. I was like, bounce. I'm writing 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 be manipulated it more because that person's 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 or 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 and this edge and this hunger, and I've already failed. So I'm not scared of rejection where they're all, so now I just, I 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 be in the real world. 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 can definitely relate. I appreciate that. Yeah. So do you think that being an underdog helps you be like more nimble? So let's let's talk about you in the solar space. So you're a 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. 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 winging it. 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 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 join 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. You know, I've sold Kirby vacuum cleaners for a couple weeks and I said, this is a rip off. I can't do it. I've sold wireless cell phones and PDAs,

BlackBerrys 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 groom that. When I did home security and we were getting into that business, I said, I don't care for selling water or ice or home security or solar. With solar, I can make this work. I just didn't understand solar. So I had to hire a G.C. contract to kind of educate us on the process. And then I realized real fast how scary this is, because I can go out and sell it. But in solar, it's like a construction business. It's not like the home security where I sign you up and I sell the paper to ADT or BRICs 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 until it installs. And that could be two, three months later. You've got to pay your sales commission, your marketing, your interconnection, you're permitting, everything. And it becomes a cash problem. So when 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 going to 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 until 15. Because I wrapped up the sale of the home security company. And in 15, we did three million in sales. We lost a million bucks. A million bucks had to come from somewhere, right? Came from me with the 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 three plus times, almost four times the size. However, or plus four times size, we still lost money. money and that had to come from somewhere. And I started to get 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. I'm like, I can't. We argued about it. And I said, if you want out, get out. I'm in. And so in June of 16, I brought him back full time and said, either you're in or out.

He came and helped me grow up because things were starting to turn. 17, we did really well. We did 40 million in sales. We were profitable. 18. We did 105. We're profitable. Last year, we did 185 profit. We'll 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. And if you can be passionate, you believe in something you sell, that's what it was. And I wasn't scared to fail and learn. And what I built is what I wanted to do that was different in this company is I didn't want to depend on people. When we were doing home security, I depended on sales reps to knock a door

or call somebody, and 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 gen 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 hand

and said they're interested. It's a whole different mindset that really allows us to be. successful. At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves scrappy hustlers. And I'm really picky when it comes to my employees. My team is growing every day.

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according to Indeed data worldwide. Plus, there's no subscriptions or long-term contracts. You literally just pay for your results. You pay for the people that you hire. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of the show will get a $75 dollar-sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash profiting. Just go to Indeed.com slash profiting right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash profiting. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed is all you need. 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 going to take it full-fledged and quit your nine-to-five? What was that process like? Well, 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 BS 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 going to be 80 or 90 percent because, you know, I'm aggressive. I'm 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 had to stick that money in, right? And reinvest any profits for almost 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. It was like, this is working. Yeah, that's so interesting. So when you decided to turn into solar, from my understanding, you actually read about another competitor who transformed his security business into a solar business. What was his name? He was from 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 out of 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, knocking 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 and sold security, they were like, they were Goliath, 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-ish, 2011-ish.

And I wanted to get into it in about 13. I read about it. And I'm like, man, this guy went from APEC security to Vivid Security, Vivid Security, to Vivid-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. And when I had the opportunity to get out of the security business

of 15 and went full blown, I was excited. It was a tough road. I wouldn't use the construction part. You know, Todd's team now just, Vivit, just partnered with him, got bought by Sun Run about a month ago. Okay. It was a major billion dollar deal,

a couple billion dollars. And Sun Run bought him 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 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. It was like, wow, we kind of got to do things. Our market's a little different.

We don't door knock. Ours is all online or TV customers want inquire about us. we go sign 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 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 know, 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 for 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 it 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 in Lake Norman. You know, we got a boat, you know, it's like this life is pretty good to,

we got to sell the house. We've got a downgrade. We're all, you know, six of us are going to be in the smaller house where our oldest graduates high school. You know, we're going to back, you know, I'm a big believer in not using credit. So everything I usually buy cash anyways. so you know buy the small house cash sell that house whatever got you reinvest it 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 he only made 250 grand he had no money to really to put in so here i am we're equal partners when we became partners i said look kev we're going to be equal even though he had nothing to really pony up, I didn't care, I'm not greedy. I said, I just got to 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 robbing. 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 yet 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, what's wrong? I'm like, you know, Kevin thinks we need to shut down. You know, I'm arguing with them. I'm like, no, you know, I've 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 getting 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. Like, wait, you 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. Yeah. So I was like, all right. So I prayed about it. And I thought about it. And I was like, I'm not going to go down like this. You know, I'm a fighter. You know, if it's fight or flight, I fight every single time. I'm never scared. So I'm like, I've got to go swinging. What's the worst thing? I lose everything. I start over. I got to do this. So I went in and 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'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, you close the call. So get down here. And so he did. And he could take over the marketing part. And I could still grow the sales and the operations. And, you know, that got me through that time. But

that whole time struggling not getting a paycheck. And me and Kevin worried, we were using personal Amexes 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 going to do? Kevin's always been cool and calm and collective, right? Kevin's the type, if his house is on fire, he's going to smile ear to ear and go, it's all right, man. That's how he 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 edgy. I'm like, what? I like the Tasmanian level. 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 a plan. Trust me. And it worked. And 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 mean, we were bent, not broken. And we've been in tough spots at home security before. I know he has. He had to shut down 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 a 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. And we did. We had each other, Kevin and I, and we had our family's support, but we tried not to share too much with them because they would have freaked out. And we got through it. And as we did and we grew, the light at the tunnel, things are going good.

And 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 EBITA meant, 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. And that's not my bread and butter. My bread and butter's passion, vision, culture, motivation, and work ethic and streamlining, becoming scalable on cost.

Yeah, there's so many cool things that you brought up in such interesting. I love the fact that you fired 70, I think you said 70% of your staff. I just had Brian Scudamore on and he's the CEO of 1-800 Got 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 past? as I am, and it's not necessarily about 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, one of the problems I devolve and get better on that people should probably take notice to is when you're small and you're building a business, it becomes like a personal relationship. You work for me. We've 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 the brand.

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 backs 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 be 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% do 80% of the work. Your next 60% do 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. And 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. Okay, 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 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 had 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 re-ferlo everybody and close the doors early in March and call it a day like some of these other

companies and that's smart. And it was the day after GE executives took a pay cut to keep their employees working. Not GE, it 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 the 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 as if we closed down, then Lucy

couldn't pay for her diapers or she couldn't get a formula for kid or or John, who's an installer, that's the only income at their house. They can't pay their car payment or the power bill. 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. And my partner messed up on a hit. 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 negotiate with the NFL teams to take the payments then as well. And we are going to, 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 and 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 ourselves off payroll for almost three months, all the executives. And that was a tough pill to swallow for a couple of them. I said, 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 have taken 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, were good now, things have turned around. But when we did that and we did a deal with Generac, around the same time, which was crazy as our battery and storage in Generac 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. Yeah. 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 hundreds of thousands of dollars on plexiglass to be safe.

We got masks. We were paying attention to the CDC and the. 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 a employee wanted to work. It was our job to stay open. And we did that.

And the executives 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 Valon, who's one of the doctors that, it's creating 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. He 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 and 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. So we love what we do and we got through that okay. But it's really about teamwork and solution solving what's best for the brand in the company, not yourself and not an individual, but the company. Hello, young improfitors. Running my own business has been one of the most rewarding things I've ever done, but I won't lie to you. In those early days of setting it up, I feel like I was jumping on a cliff with no parachute.

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more free resources, Northwest Registered Agent is where you should go. Don't wait and protect your privacy, build your brand, and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit Northwest Registeredagent.com slash Yapfree and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwest Registeredagent.com slash yapfree. 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 in 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 going to 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 going to go away. Eventually, we're going to have renewable sources everywhere that the utility company is a distributor. 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 and 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 grid's always down. they're very reckless with their cleanup efforts where people are getting poisoned from coal ash. There's just some problems there, right? And 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 their cars at night. They don't want to pay an arm in a leg to do that. Having solar allows them. All these things I was excited about in 14 and 15 when 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 a 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. You know, I wasn't, I don't drive a Prius when I first opened. I drove a monster truck, like legit, okay? 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. Like, 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, their AC, their, you know, their Wi-Fi, the refrigeration, whatever it is. And we want to be a part of that. It's technology driven and it's cutting edge and it's exciting. And, you know, our culture, we try to stay fresh. We try to be cutting edge. Right now, we're at 77% battery attachment rate. It means 77 out of every customer gets solar gets a battery. Well, you don't save money when you get a battery. It costs 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. They're coming down. I mean, think of the electric cars. You got Mustang sold out day one. Camaro sold out day one. I'm in line to get an electric hummer. 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, 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. 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 to 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 PowerHall? 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 $100 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 going to 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 providers for residential solar. So that's huge. That's amazing. It is huge. And look, we're big in the environment. We're big in the military. We've been a military makeover twice where we donate a system. We did three water solar farms for Give 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 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 and really the issue you have is you have a lot of Republicans who are pro-coll and they just don't get it and they're wrong for that. You have a lot of Democrats that are pro-solar but, you know, they don't want people to like there's just there's a blend there that I wish in today's world somebody would come out of the woodwork that would, you know, know, we already have enough problems to disagree on, right? With everything else in politics,

they all need to align 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, genius is anybody. You can't overnight get to the top. It just doesn't work that way. And what you learn from taking the stairs or little wins is you learn, oh, you know, if I set a 30-day plan and, you know, if 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 day, 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 winds, you go up the stairs a little faster because

it only takes one to take off and it really starts to move. But people too many times are like, I'm going to try to lose weight. And when they don't lose eight pounds in week one, they quit. Or I'm going to open a business. I'm going to be the best sales guy ever. 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 win, small step, small step, small step. Because there is no button to go in the elevator. I mean, 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 Home Solar. We had no money.

We had to roll carts over Manila folders of customers things and give it to the other person in the computer to put it on there. We had a tile board from a shower at lows. 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 fulfillmentness inside my soul. Everyone says, you know, success, how much money you make or which drive to me, it's not. I mean, I was judged that in 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 the 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 or director. It's like, hey, man, I just love being here. and I got to buy my first house 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. And 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 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 is different.

Some is title. is money. Don't ever chase money. Chase success. Chase a why. You know, you can, there's 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 pay is 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 is 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 lives. 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 care so much about his employees in the world. So that makes me feel like a lot of confidence in, you know, our world in general to have like 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 you a free

proposal and send somebody out to make sure we can get you to own your power, not run it, and save money and save the planet. We have a new podcast out where, you know, it's called True Underdog. You go to True Underdog.com or you can go to IHeartRadio, Spotify. or Apple Podcasts, 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, overcome an adversity, how we can really better the earth and planet and people.

Because people sometimes need a kick in the butt. I know I do. I listen to stuff. I need help sometimes. We're all human. So I just like to share that. Anything that I can help people get ahead 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. They're like, oh, I don't want to quit. I want to do this. That kind of stuff's 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, Hala. Be good. Be safe. Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcast. or comment on YouTube, SoundCloud, or your favorite platform. Reviews make all the hard work worth it.

They're the ultimate thank you to me and the Yap team. The other way to support us is by word of mouth. Share this podcast with a friend or family member who may find it valuable. Follow Yap on Instagram at Young and Profiting and Check us out at young and profiting.com. You can find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn. Just search for my name, Hala Taha. Until next time, this is. Tala, signing off.