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Speaker 1 (00:02 ):

Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.

Speaker 2 (00:42 ):

What's going on. So premiers today, we have a very special episode coming. We are here alive with my friend, a high performance coach, Mike and I just double checked his last name before we started the call. It's Mike Szczesniak. Mike, thanks for hopping on the podcast here with us today.

Speaker 3 (00:59 ):

Taylor, thanks for having me brother looking forward to this. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02 ):

And then yeah, it's been a, a little bit common here. Mike, I know you've been helping out a ton of reps and managers, all types of people in the solar industry, and it's been pretty crazy just hearing your results. You know, we have a mutual friend, Mikey Lucas, I know you've helped him out a ton. He was on the podcast and was just raving about you, how you've been able to just help reps turn it around and achieve, you know, and seen results. And what's even more cool about it is we were just talking before this you've have you even knocked a door yourself, Mike, have you even done door to door yourself?

Speaker 3 (01:35 ):

Not to sell anything? Which is like, I, I gotta be really careful. I like M and M eight mile this thing, like, I, I don't claim to be a door to door sales guy. I just claim to know how to help. 'em Make a lot more money than they're currently making . Right. So but yeah, Mikey's the reason that we got into this space, which I'm sure we'll dive into, but yeah. Yeah, I've been in sales my whole life, right. Starting in eighth grade. My first job was selling retail. I built like started my first comp for anyone watching the video, like these duct tape wallets in fifth grade. So like I've been selling my whole life. But yeah, not door to door. So like can't even compare I sell on zoom and on the phone. So my job's way easier than y'all, but our systems sell really expensive problems for our clients. So

Speaker 2 (02:24 ):

Yeah. Well, that's awesome. I think it just goes to show for me, like you don't have to be like you don't have to be a master door to door guide and be able to coach people. And I know we'll get into that more, but I think a lot of what you do is help guys turn their mindsets around and just really achieve the right kind of mindset they need out on the doors, out closing deals. And that just was the show. I think that's probably, you know, 80% of the game is just getting your mind right. And getting all the thing that's happening above right as you go out there. But no. So we'll dive into all that and excited to kind of hear about your background, Mike, he has a podcast he's been coaching. How long have you had your coaching business going on now? Mike?

Speaker 3 (03:04 ):

Geez. Four or five years. And working with door to door specifically. I mean we niche fully into door to door during COVID. So I guess that's like year and a half come on two, two years or so that we've been working with door door though.

Speaker 2 (03:23 ):

Okay. Right on. So yeah. Incredible results. You've achieved for people. And I mean, with a last name like that, how could you not be a coach? I keep thinking you know, Duke's coach Micah. Yeah. Chef, coach Kate. I say, yeah. I keep looking at man. Yeah. so you guys must be something in the, in the water there with coaching, but , that's awesome.

Speaker 3 (03:45 ):

A hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (03:47 ):

Yeah. But so Mike let's get into yeah. I want to hear kind of how you transitioned specifically in the door-to-door space, why you got into coaching. I know you have a cool story with your anxieties and all that. So can you give us some of your background and how you got into whole, all coaching side of things that you're doing? Yeah,

Speaker 3 (04:02 ):

Totally. So like I mentioned, like been in sales, my whole life spent about a decade in the retail space from eighth grade through the beginning of my software career, cuz the beginning of my software career was unpaid training. I spent seven years in corporate as a software engineer. Well once I graduated college, I went straight down to wall street and wrote code for a living for seven years. And I used all of that money to pump into myself, my businesses, mentors, masterminds, coaches, whatever I could do, right. Like I wanted to grow. And a large reason that was just the people I had surrounded myself with. Like, you know, I started three companies while I was in corporate. The first was in the network marketing space. Second was in e-com and drop shipping and third was finally coaching and consulting.

Speaker 3 (04:48 ):

So I learned a ton in the first two, surrounded myself with badass humans that really preached personal development. They preached investing in yourself and I learned pretty quickly that I needed to deploy the money that I was in software engineering. Cuz you make pretty good money over there from a salaried perspective. It's pretty much like as close to Fu money as you'll get outside of commission sales or business owners or yeah. You know, whatever. So I, I knew that I had to deploy that. And like you mentioned, during that process, I was really quickly figuring out what anxiety and debilitating panic attacks were and wouldn't wish that on my like most mortal enemy. But this is at a time where like in corporate, on the outside, everything looked great, right? Like every year was big pay, raise, big promotion, like very linear climb in corporate America.

Speaker 3 (05:41 ):

And I was like the youngest, senior engineer on my team. I had the six figure salary. I had the luxury apartment on the up grease side of Manhattan with the fountains outside the doormen, the fountains inside. Like by the way only did that. Cause my roommate had connections. Right. But like all this stuff that we're supposed to want, right. Like the vanity stuff. Right. And behind closed doors, it was like nothing even close. Like it was completely in shambles. Hmm. Because I was experiencing that and I bring that up because after a year and a half of this journey, right. Like my first panic attack was wow. Right. Which kind of tells you about the mental side of this whole thing. Right. The new year. Granted of course you're a little hung over that day. I was like a single me three year old dude living in Manhattan.

Speaker 3 (06:28 ):

Right. Yeah. But you know, from that moment it was a year and a half journey of, you know, going to the doc, getting my chest, x-ray doing breathing tests. Like I legitimately thought it was a physiological issue. I had no idea what any of this stuff was like, never heard of anybody going through it and no one in my personal life could relate to it. Right. So like I thought my lungs straight up didn't work. Wow. And I'm grateful that I found out, like I basically self-diagnosed it afterwards. I'm like this, I started hearing like anxiety and like this kind of sounds like what it is. I started doing research and you know, I say I'm grateful because then they, would've probably just tried to push a bunch of pharmaceuticals into me, which I proved I didn't need with disrespect. That's just not a route.

Speaker 3 (07:17 ):

I would've more wanted to go for me personally. And mm-hmm after that year and a half journey being the engineering nerd that I am, I had to like reverse engineer. What was going on? Like what was happening in the attacks? Why was I going through what I was going through? And what I found Taylor was 100% of the attacks happened in a where I felt guilty for not working. Right. Cause back then remember I was doing the whole, I was selling 40 to 60 hours of my week to the corporation that I was working at. And then I would do the whole five to 7:00 AM, seven to 11:00 PM side hustle. Right. Like I very much fell into the toxic hustle mindset and like that, that call and it worked for me until it didn't and I was starting to figure out how and when and why it didn't mm-hmm right.

Speaker 3 (08:10 ):

So what that made me realize like, okay, cool. Well, how can I not feel so guilty? And I, I realized if I was able to show up more powerfully when I was working and pair it with a little bit of a healthier mindset, I might not feel so when I wasn't working. Right. And ultimately I realized I had no idea what it meant to be productive. Like no idea. I thought I did, but I was very quickly realizing that like doing things doesn't matter if the things you're doing don't matter. Hmm. So I like to say that that kind of like cracked the door open cuz productivity is just a small subset of the work that we do with our clients. Yeah. Right. For me it will always be my baby. I joked that it was like my gateway drug to high performance. Right.

Speaker 3 (08:56 ):

Cause it cracked that door open, but it, it wasn't for, you know, a couple more year