Success Through Being a True Underdog with Jayson Waller: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like My First Million. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives and we'll be breaking down success through being a true underdog. To drop these value bombs, I are brought to Jason Waller and to EO Fire Studios. Jason 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. He's also the host of his own podcast, True Underdog, where he shares stories to inspire millions around the world.

0:38In today's Fire Nation, we'll talk about how too many people quit too early. Our ultimate goal is to push them to be a little bit more. And you need to promote within Fire Nation, hire those who are hungry, who love what they do, and who are passionate, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Jason and our sponsors. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr. JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly, make it work.

1:12A recent episode on whether vulnerability is a superpower in business is a must listen. Listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world. And four-time TEDx speaker, Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions. Jason, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:51What's up, Fire Nation, and thanks, JLD. I appreciate you, man. I think most people disagree that they want to have retention of their employees. And I get that. I understand like if you're UPS or, you know, you're the post office or, you know, you're, you know, Microsoft and you're not really growing, you're doing the same thing and you want to sustain employment and have retention. I get it. But when you're growing a business, you're an entrepreneur, you're building it from the ground up. I believe in an 80 20 rule. I believe that you need to churn and burn 20 % of your staff, that you put KPIs in place, that you're always putting them on a, on a pit plan.

2:28And that bottom 20%, I believe just holds you back. And so I'm a big believer of the top 20 % of your staff does 80 % of the work. The next 60 % does 20 % of the work. And that bottom 20 % is just complaining, finding reasons to slow things down. So the more you churn and burn that, you know, I built my company over five years, upped over 2000 employees, but we're eliminating 20 % of the staff all the time. That, that, that isn't cutting the mustard. You want to have a strong bench and a strong starting team. And I think a lot of people like, Oh, it's about retention. It is for those doing their job.

3:00It is for those that are giving the effort that, and what's required to get the job done. But for those that it's just a placement holder of, I'm just checking in and clocking in and making a paycheck. And this isn't a lifestyle or career for me. You got to learn to move on from them fast. Churn and burn, Fire Nation. You can't be afraid to always be trending in an upwards direction and churning and burning is going to help you do that. Now, Jason, you are a true underdog, my friend. I mean, you went from a mobile home to becoming a multi millionaire. So let's talk about how you started from the bottom.

3:32Now you're here all the way up to building this national solar company that you're rocking. You know, I watched my dad struggle. Yeah. He didn't finish high school, neither did my mom and they worked multiple jobs. I helped them and we're living in the trailer park or I like how you worded it mobile home. I like that. Yeah, that was polite way, but people would make fun of me in school. Even my wife's family, we've been together since high school. They didn't want her to be with me because we lived in a trailer and they'd make fun of us, basically call us the Flintstones. And a lot of that was motivation.

3:59It was something that I couldn't control. You know, in today's world, people talk about, oh, well, I can't control my race or, or my religion or my gender. They can't, you also can't control if you're broke. and I was broke and people would make fun of me for being broke. And it was hard and it was motivating. I used it as, as fuel to try to take the next level. And I was able to communicate with people. I was able to enroll people. I think everybody's got a gift. You got to find out what it is. And I was able to, for people to believe in anything I believed in. So I started in sales, I crushed it.

4:29And then I felt handcuffed because of no education and because of my age, I couldn't get promoted. So I started my own company, not knowing what to do. Lots of intimidation, lots of fear of the unknown, but I learned from experience and failure to continue to build that and build something I believed in. This is the third company I built from the ground up, but this is the largest by far. And I love it. It's like when you build a business, it's like a child. I've got four kids. Well, I've got my company Powerhome, so I really got five kids. And I know all you parents out there, you feel the same way.

5:01I mean, if you're a parent, you have the children, you have the kiddos, and then you also have the business, which is very demanding, very temperamental. I mean, my dog's having a little temper tantrum this morning and just kind of how it is. Sometimes you just got to deal with the business, deal with the pets, deal with the kids. If you're going to build the business of your dream. Now I am Jason, I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm actually a huge solar guy. I have 41 panels on my home here in Puerto Rico, and I've got three Tesla power walls right in my garage. I am completely off grid down here.

5:35So, you know, loving that self-dependence and of course, you know, getting to earn some money back from all the money we're sending back to the grid on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. What role does renewable energy play over the next decade? And how do you personally plan to participate in this role? Great question. And congrats on having some energy independence. That's important. That's what most people don't realize. Like, oh, it's about saving money. No, it's about controlling your costs and not being left in the dark and having that independence. So kudos to you for going that direction.

6:06EV is here to stay. All these electric vehicles are coming out. I mean, the electric Hummer's got an 18 month waiting list. The electric Mustang sold out in 30 minutes. Things are crazy with electric cars because the cost of gasoline rises. You've got all these issues. People just want cool, fast cars. I've got my first EV recently. I'm in love with it, but you got to charge it. And we don't have enough power from the utility companies as it is. And we really don't have enough clean power as it is. So it's really not only is it smart because we don't want to be left in the dark with all the power outages and we don't want to have to pay premiums when we're charging our electric cars coming out at late at night, but it's our duty because there's not enough energy out there.

6:47So for us to look at some kind of renewable energy method, whether it be wind or solar, hydro, whatever, it's the right thing to do. It's cost effective. You control your cost. You're not left in the dark. Like you said, you're independent. You've got rolling blackouts. You got all these things going on in Texas and these polar vortexes in the Midwest. Power goes out. What are people going to do? You've got kids, you're working from home, you got medication, things that you worry about. And we're going to continue to lay out that platform to really create energy independence here in the U.S. where Most people have some kind of access to that where they're not relying on a really old school grid that's broken from the utility company.

7:25It never really works right. And we need more energy anyways. We're using so much energy than what we used to. Where's it gonna come from? Well, we have to do solar. We have to do wind and we have to do hydro to get it there. There's so much power here, Fire Nation. And Jason, you mentioned stuff like what's happening in Texas and rolling blackouts and hurricanes and tornadoes. I mean, back in 2017, there was a massive hurricane here in Puerto Rico, devastated the islands. My specific community, which came back online, by the way, much faster than the rest of the island, but we were out of power for four months.

7:57Even scarier than that, we were out of water for like three or four weeks, meaning that you could not get water out of your tap. And we didn't have necessarily like a pond or a river to go to. And so like that's scary stuff because, you know, listen, you can hypothetically live without power for a decent amount of time, but water is a couple of days. So now that I have my solar power, Jason, I bought this newbie atmospheric water generator. So as long as I have power, which I always will because of my Tesla Powerwall and my panels, I get eight gallons of water pumping a day through this water generator just from the humidity in the air, Jason.

8:33It takes humidity from the air and it makes eight gallons of fresh water a day. So talk about being independent, protecting yourself and your family. I'm able to do that because of solar and knowing that if another massive category four or five hurricane rips through here, my solar power is going to be powering my house, which is going to be powering my water generator. I've got 12 months of 50-year shelf life food in my attic. I'm good to go for the foreseeable future. If something like that happens, it'll put me in a position to help others who maybe aren't in that lucky of a situation. So think about all of this as you're building up your plan going forward.

9:10Now, one thing that you've done that I'm really impressed with Jason is a great job with your podcast, True Underdog. So I want to talk about brand building because you've done that really well with this podcast. So what advice do you have for Fire Nation around building a brand that matters? So Powerhome Solar, the company, I built that brand up, you know, we opened it up in 15 and we'll do 750 million in sales and we got over 2000 employees. I mean, we're probably going to go public soon. We've talked to some SPACs, we're looking at some things. It's, it's great. But what I realized is they had me on TV commercials and I started doing some TV shows as an entrepreneur.

9:47I said, look, I want to, I want to do something great. So I tried the podcast thing, just messing around with it. And the podcast is true underdog. And I started it and I had some friends that played in the NFL and I had some business guys that I knew that, you know, come from nothing and became something successful. And I told those stories and it took off. It just exploded. And, you know, I got on shows like yours and other people's shows and told my story. And I, that show became a top three entrepreneur podcast, uh, you know, for, uh, Apple and it started exploding. And then that morphed to building the brand of, you know, you got the, you got the business of power home, you got the podcast.

10:23Well, let me write a book, let me give back. And so then I put the book out there and it all ties together. You know, you are your brand, you represent you and your company. And, you know, if I'm going to be the face of the franchise here at power home, then I've got to build the brand up as good as I can. And I've got to deliver on what I say I'm going to do. And I got to be about it, not just talk about it. And, you know, I'm very passionate. I'm very open. I don't have any thing that I hide from. I talk openly about, you know, where I stand on building a business, where I stand on, you know, entrepreneurs, things like that.

10:56And I share, and I think that that kind of energy in different realms between a podcast, a book and a business only help each other. And then I use a lot of coaches. I mean, I don't know everything. Like I didn't go to college. I didn't even know what EBITDA meant a couple of years ago. That's a true story. I have to learn, but I have enough humility and humbleness to walk up and say, I don't know this, but let me surround myself with people smarter than me that bring other superhero powers that I don't have. So we can be a great team because business and life are like a puzzle and you got to put those pieces together in order to grow.

11:26Fire Nation, so much power here. I mean, humbleness, humility. Do you have those two things that are going to allow you to go to a coach, to go to people that you look up to and admire and ask them for advice, for guidance, because a lot of people have been there, done that. You can learn so much from them. And Fire Nation, if you think we're even close to done dropping value bombs, we're talking about Jason's first book, Own Your Power, with eight principles for a no excuses life. We're talking about legacy. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, Starting your year off strong and accomplishing goals like increasing revenue and faster growth starts with the right selling tools.

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12:42Nope. It's free to get started and will grow with your business as it scales. And with more than 1 ,300 integrations and a ton of valuable add-ons, you can customize it to your exact needs. With Sales Hub, closing deals is no big deal. Head to hubspot.com slash sales to try it for free. Do you have a message inside that you know is meant to be shared with the world? Giving a TEDx talk is one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world and Thought Leader can help you get there. Thought Leader is a speaker coaching company that has helped over 550 and counting coaches, speakers, entrepreneurs, authors, and experts land TEDx talks.

13:19Thought Leader is not affiliated with TED or TEDx, but they're able to get these results because their founder, Taylor Conroy, is a four-time TEDx speaker himself and past EO Fire guest. You might be thinking a TEDx talk sounds great, but where do you start? Taylor has put together a free training that's going to teach you how to land a TEDx talk in as little as 90 days. Join Taylor to learn exactly what TEDx organizers are looking for in their speakers, how to write a talk that goes viral once it goes online, and more. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire. Join Taylor for this free training and get your message out of your head, out of your heart, and out into the world where it belongs.

13:58That's thought-leader.com slash fire. All right, Jason, we are back. And as I mentioned before the break, you wrote a book, you called it Own Your Power. And this book goes through eight principles for a no excuses life. Talk about this book. Talk about some of these principles, maybe your favorites. Let's hear it for Fire Nation. I appreciate it. You know, when I won the 2019 Entrepreneur of the Year Award, they told me, hey, you've got to write a book. And I said, I've never read a book. They're like, well, it's your duty. And I realized they're right. Like, I'm like, people, I can be relative to people.

14:35People can relate to my life. They've been there. Oh, I didn't graduate high school. Oh, I had a kid in my teens. Oh, I lived in a trailer park. Oh, you know, I didn't go to college. Oh, I struggled with, you know, fear and insecurity when I first opened my business. People can relate to me. And I think that that's the nice thing. So I created this book to kind of get people. It's called Own Your Power. No excuses. No BS. The time is now. And the chapters are like, make your own map. Like you every day get to create your own map. You can't have outside influence go over that. And I tell a story of where I won that award.

15:06And I was really thinking, how the F did I get here? And then I remembered when I went to see my first daughter born, she's now my mother-in-law, but my wife's mom wouldn't let me in the hospital, went under an alias name. And I couldn't go see my kid born. I went up there with a camera and I'm taking pictures and I'm, I'm 19 years old and I'm bawling, not knowing which kid is mine. And I made a decision that day where two lives would change. My daughter came into the world and I was going to be, I wasn't going to let outside people influence who I was going to be. I was going to be a great father and everything.

15:33And, you know, to make the story even a little wilder, my wife's mom at the time, my mother-in-law, she wanted to give our kid up for adoption. And me and my girlfriend at the time were fighting about it. So all of these little things are, I have personal and business stories in there that people can relate to. And that's make your own map. And I decided that now, you know, I've got a great relationship with her and I've done everything that I wanted to do with, with her family. And, you know, I fly them out and buy them dinners and stuff like that. But, you know, and then I go through another principle of there's no elevator in life.

15:59You got to take the stairs. Another one, don't be held hostage. How many times are you hiring a salesperson or you're hiring a vendor or you're hiring a company or you're in a relationship and you feel like I'm stuck? You know, I've got too many bills with this person. I've got kids with this person or, oh, this is my top sales rep. If, if I don't give into them, my company will crumple. I talk about, you know, how to really facilitate and protect yourself against that and build systems where you're, you, things are replaceable in your life and in business. So you're not held hostage. And then one of my favorites is scared money.

16:29Don't make money. I talk about betting on yourself and love your haters. And so those are some of the principles I go through. And there's a lot of personal and business stories that, you know, I've entailed that I can share with people and how to get through things. And there's like worksheets at the end of each chapter. And then I've had some great interviews where I've taken some of the information I've learned on the podcast and stuck it in there from some of the people I've interviewed. Scared money don't make money. Fire Nation, think about that. That is a phrase for the ages. And before we do move on, what exactly is a no excuses life?

17:04I mean, I know it pretty much speaks for itself, but I guess I want the Jason phrase or the Jason definition of what it means to live a no excuses life. Well, it means that you're not going to let your family members or your in-laws or your siblings or your friends or your peers or your haters dictate what you're going to do. Because all of these people, there's some good people around you, but there's also some bad people around you that are jealous and insecure. And they want to watch from the sidelines and critique rather than make action and do things great. And this is helping you find a way to do the things great because everybody can talk trash and everybody can talk about what they want to do.

17:40And, hey, one day I'll do this. This is making day one start now. So it's not one day, it's day one. And no more excuses. Don't listen to the noise. Focus on the day by day, the play by play, the moment by moment, you know, small goals, small wins, taking the stairs, not the elevator and making no excuses. We all have challenges. We all have problems. We all have dealt with some kind of adversity, insecurity, jealousy. We've all done that. We all some worse than others. My life definitely wasn't the worst by no means. But what was big and hurtful and strong for me was my problems I had to overcome.

18:14And that's what people need to look at is the glass half full and that they control their destiny and not let any kind of noise or outside influence really give them an excuse to not take that leap of faith to be who they're intended to be. Let's talk legacy. How would you like your legacy to be remembered as an entrepreneur on fire? Well, with our company now, I want to do some kind of public or event where everybody in the company can have a life-changing event. I think that that's important because the company is built on our employees and they're the ones that they're the foundation of it.

18:47And I want to reward them. But so that's part of my professional legacy on a personal legacy or as an entrepreneur and an influencer out there. I just want to empower enough people to be better. You know, the world is a tough spot and it's not getting easier. And I just want to know that I've helped and empowered and encouraged enough people to do the right thing, to get through things and to be who they wanted to be. And I always say success isn't money. Success isn't job title. Success is filling that hole in that void of having gratitude and happiness inside and having fulfillment. And so if I can share and help people find that, then to me, that's a big enough legacy.

19:27Jason, let's end with a bang. I wanna talk about own your power. I mean, you've already chatted about the eight principles, a lot of them, and of course, and no excuses life. But if Fire Nation wants to learn more, where would they go to pick up this book? What any other final call to action may you have and ways that we can connect with you? And then we'll say goodbye. Well, right now you can do the pre-order at Amazon. You just put in Own Your Power and you'll find it there. It's Amazon pre-order for the audio book. If you do do a pre-order, you get a swag bag with some cool shirts and you're gonna get a bonus chapter of another book I'll do called Bam, Building a Movement.

20:03and you can visit me at Jason Waller Bam on social media or Jason Waller, Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn, and then you can always follow the True Underdog podcast and you go to jasonwaller.com and get all of that. But yeah, I think to leave a message for everybody is, listen, today is day one, not one day. So try to make that change today. Don't get discouraged looking all the way at the top of the staircase thinking you can't get there. Look at each step as a goal, get those small wins and eventually you'll get to the top. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

20:34You've been hanging out with Jdubs and JLD today. So keep up that heat. Head over to eofire.com, type Jason. That's Jason with a Y, J-A-Y-S-O-N. In the search bar, the show notes page will pop up with everything we've talked about here today. And Jason, I wanna say thank you, brother, for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you. Bam. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Jason and Fire Nation. Are you ready to rock your very own podcast? Check out our free podcasting course where I will teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free.

21:16Visit freepodcastcourse.com and I will catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr. JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly, make it work. A recent episode on whether vulnerability is a superpower and business is a must listen. Listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world.

21:51And four-time TEDx speaker, Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions.