SOLAR SALES NETWORK MARKETING DUPLICATION SYSTEM OUTSHINES TRADITIONAL MODELS

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Recruiting for a sales team in corporate America and recruiting to build a team in the network marketing space share a lot of similarities. But it’s in their key differences where you’ll discover true time and financial freedom, as solar sales leader Melissa Dawson well knows! Join us for a smart conversation about having an impact while making an income, the importance of tools that allow business leaders to scale while reclaiming time-freedom, and the joy of leading your life by design to leave a lasting legacy.

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People can get stuck in a limiting mindset. There’s no difference between me and them, I just do the actions and daily requirements to get to where I want to be in my dreams.

Melissa Intro from Patrick:

Patrick:

Today’s guest is Melissa Dawson, who is a coach, a trainer, a leader. She hosts her own podcast and she is really helping lead the solar revolution. She got into network marketing through the solar space. She’s leading a team. She has an app and a platform called NRGIZE that is helping people to build their individual solar businesses. She’s a dynamic leader and, really excited about having her on the show today. 

Podcast:

Patrick:

Hey, welcome back to Beyond the Network Marketing Dream, and I am with my friend, Melissa Dawson. Melissa, it is exciting to be with you today.

Melissa Dawson:

It is very exciting to be on here. Thank you so much for having me on as a guest.

Patrick:

So as always Melissa, I think it’s great for people to get a little bit of context. So tell us about what you’re doing today. You’re in the solar industry and great things are happening. So talk to us a little bit about how you got here and what you’re doing currently today.

Melissa Dawson:

Well, back in 2016 from a very big influencer out there in the network marketing space, I saw that they liked a little video on Facebook. So I was like, ooh, I wonder what they’re up to? Checked it out… it was an 11-minute long video. My millennial kind of brain was like, I’m never gonna be able to watch this! Started watching it and it was about solar, and it was about making impact, and making income, you know? And doing something to leave the world in a better place. And I was just so intrigued by it, I watched it over, and over again. And then I went and met the founder of the company and was like, wow, I never thought I’d go sell solar! But man, I am all in on this mission.

Patrick:

Did you come from a background that solar resonated with you, or what was the angle there?

Melissa Dawson:

No, I actually came from a liquor industry background. So, I was really traveling the world and giving people an amazing time, sometimes a hangover, you know, but, yeah! No solar experience and never once in my life did I say, when I grow up, “I wanna be a CEO of a solar business and I’m gonna disrupt and decentralize the entire energy grid.” I never said that, but one day it just fell upon me and here we are.

Patrick:

Awesome. So what has been the most… how long have you been in the solar space now then?

Melissa Dawson:

Since 2016.

Patrick:

Okay, and you’re with Powur, which is – they’re doing a great job in the solar space. Tell us about the balance between selling, did you start just selling yourself and then started building an organization, or where has your focus been?

Melissa Dawson:

So at the very beginning I really just started building a huge organization, because I had seen other people have set so much success in network marketing. The platform, the idea, the concept of going out and building a team just made total sense to me. So of course I learned how to sell solar along the way, but at the same time, continually doing business development with different companies to become their solar division. So it really gave me an opportunity to. build a team across the world, and then help them add a solar division to their current portfolio.

Patrick:

One thing I think that’s interesting that we chatted about before, just pre-show, was just there are so many companies, and I think Powur falls into that category sometimes, where they’re almost trying to avoid – and I remember this – I came from a LegalShield background, so for 20-some years… and there were all these factions that were fighting with each other about, oh, we’re not in the network marketing space. And it seemed to diminish the value proposition. And that’s always a bit of a struggle. How has Powur handled that? How have you handled that personally? What has been your real experience? Like are you, when you recruit sometimes, are you running into people that see a real struggle with that, or do you think that is sometimes internalized by the person that is doing the prospecting and they’re struggling with it more? But what’s your… I’m curious.

Melissa Dawson:

So, you know, for me, because I come from that corporate America background, I can quickly see the value of what a direct sales network marketing company brings. So let me give you an example. I was a manager of a company, my job was to go out and hire a sales team, right. So what was my job? My job was to recruit, right? Now, who paid me to do that? My company did. So it has to come out of their budget.

Patrick:

Mm-hmm.

Melissa Dawson:

You know what makes way more sense? You have a network marketing company, guess what? Now I’m the, now all my managers, they go out and recruit, right? But who’s paying the profit? Is it me, the business owner? No, it’s coming out of Powur’s share of the profit. So to me, any business-minded person should totally see that value. Like, oh my gosh, I can go help this company, have a solar division. And a whole section that’s paying the managers to go recruit is not coming out of my bottom line, that’s coming out of Powur’s bottom line. So just, to me, it’s such a no-brainer, you know, that’s, that’s why Keller Williams is so successful. That’s why eXp is so successful is because people that are open business minded can see that the numbers totally make sense.

Patrick:

And it does save the company, right? Because now they’re not overpaying somebody that’s not very good at recruiting, because they had a salary and a budget, they’re just paying in direct proportion to the value that that person is actually creating in the model.

Melissa Dawson:

Absolutely. And then it ensures that when I’m doing these business developments with these companies and I’m bringing them on board and I’m teaching them or their employees how to sell solar, or how to be a referral agent, it’s ensuring that I am going to make sure that they have success, because that’s how I get paid! Just like in corporate America, I got paid on how many sales my sales teams completed. So it’s the same kind of concept where we get to make money, by helping others.

Patrick:

And, you know, as you’ve built in this solar space specifically, and you’re out recruiting and building a team, tell me a little bit about this balance between, like… you’re starting to launch your own podcast ,and you’re doing a lot of grassroots recruiting. You know, how is all of that going? How is your vision, or your approach to the market changed since you’ve gotten things, since you started with the business?

Melissa Dawson:

Well, since I started with the business, at that point in my time, I didn’t have a, what I like to call a tool belt full of tools and everything that I needed for success. So far as time management, it was all me. Was it trackable? I didn’t do a very good job of it, or anything like that. So if we wanna fast forward to today, luckily, Patrick, I did get to meet you in Colorado. I discovered RapidFunnel, your amazing platform. And that was completely game changer for me because it gave me time-freedom back. So one of the most important freedoms that we have as human beings is time-freedom. And so to have a platform that allowed me to be scalable, duplicatable, trackable, that was what the tool I needed in my tool belt to help me really truly scale my company to where it is today.

Patrick:

That’s awesome. And I’ll ask some questions on that too. But, but, are you launching your podcast? I think we talked about it briefly, or have you launched it? Tell us about it.

Melissa Dawson:

Yeah, so I do. I have a podcast out right now, “MD Solar Biz Dev”. So what that really is, is I’m trying to help unite the solar industry together. Because as we know, you know, the more that we can all unite together, the more that we can go fight whatever we need to fight. And for us right now, our fight is for those homeowners to help them gain freedom from their electric companies.

Patrick:

That’s awesome. And what kind of guests are you… are you focused on different guests that come from the solar industry?

Melissa Dawson:

Yeah, so predominantly right now it’s mostly people that have had success in the solar industry so we can help take their insights and knowledge and get that out to the rest of the solar industry to help them scale as well.

Patrick:

Do you think that should help you on the personal recruiting front as well? Is that part of the objective there, like educate the community and then be able to meet people that have an interest in the space? Or maybe, I don’t know, what are your thoughts there?

Melissa Dawson:

Absolutely, not to always say that things are always just in it for ourselves, you know, but it was a strategic plan on our part to do a podcast. My social media director said, you know, this is what people are doing to help get their name out. And then with that, then what is your passion and purpose behind that podcast? Because we don’t want to just have a podcast. but there has to be a reason behind it. So yes, I will hopefully bring great marketing out of it. I’ve actually had a couple more people join our team because of it, but at the same time it is helping the industry as a whole.

Patrick:

That’s awesome. We had Dan McCormick this week on a podcast, which I imagine will come out just before this. And he said something that really struck me. He said that the, the margin is the mission. And I almost, it almost put me back in my heels for a second, I’m like, the margin is the mission? And his point is, look, we’re helping people create financial freedom, you know, life rewards purpose, if you’re creating value, you’ll get paid on it. You better pay attention to where the margin is in the product and be able to drive that through the sales organization. I just thought that was so interesting. You know, it’s almost embracing the fact that look, we’re here to make money and money is just an exchange of value. That’s all it is.

Melissa Dawson:

Right.

Patrick:

So quit hiding from the fact that if you want to create more value, That doesn’t mean you gouge anybody. It just means you figure out where the money is made and you go help to pursue that. I guess that’s a fine line, but…

Melissa Dawson:

It is, but if we think about it, if we go back to the thing that time is one of our most precious freedoms, it’s very valuable. So if we’re going to take time to do these podcasts, of course we want to give value to the world, but there has to be some, a little bit of an economical benefit in there too.

Patrick:

Yeah. So you know, something that’s near and dear to me is, you know, when we talk about lead measure, that the prospecting and follow up is so critical. What do you see with the average person? I mean, do you see those dynamics in your own sales organization? And what are you doing? I mean, obviously you’re using RapidFunnel and we’ll talk some about that. But also, like… do you find that people are committed to doing the level of activity that’s necessary. How do you try to inspire people to the next level? Do you find yourself from a culture or a cadence of accountability perspective? Do you find yourself coaching on that specifically?

Melissa Dawson:

Yes. And I actually love that you use the word coaching, because I am also a certified business and personal development coach with The Ultimate Game of Life. And one of our big things that we do there, it’s all about accountability. Same thing when I worked in corporate America, what are your KPIs, right? What are your KPIs and then being accountable. And that’s the same thing with our solar business. It’s what are your KPIs and what are you going to be accountable for? And then we take the personal development coach to not only do that in the solar industry with them, but we’re also doing that with their wealth. So it’s happy, healthy, and wealthy all in one. And it’s taking your action steps a day that you need to achieve that health goal, that happy goal and that wealth goal, and then tracking those. So if we’re talking about a wealth goal, how many homeowners do you need to talk to a day about saving money on their electric bill? Well, now with apps and technology, especially like with RapidFunnel, we’re able to track all of that and see how many people are they actually engaging with? How many people did they commit to? And then as a coach, because that’s what we’re all in this for… if you’re in the direct sales company, you are a coach. Your job is to help somebody succeed. Period. End of story. Whether that’s in their business, whatever, you’re a coach. What do we do to coach somebody? The first thing a coach does is let’s see your stats.

Patrick:

That’s awesome. So let’s talk a little bit about, you mentioned RapidFunnel, and you built a platform called the NRGIZE App, which is such a cool name for the solar industry. But it not only helps people in your own business, but it’s helping any individuals in the solar space be able to prospect more effectively, to gamify prospecting. Tell us what you’re doing with the NRGIZE App.

Melissa Dawson:

So with the NRGIZE App, it really allows us to quickly get a new person that’s come into our business, the resources that they need to authentically share with a homeowner to help them through the customer journey. And then it allows us as a coach to be able to track their progress, help see where they’re falling off in their conversations and things like that. So it’s really been great in that. And then everyone, of course, loves gamifications. You know, we’re in a game of life right now. So they want, they want to see their names on a leaderboard that they shared a home video on net metering. They want to see their names on a leaderboard that they’re helping different people along the way. So it’s, NRGIZE has really allowed us a way to measure data and reward people.

Patrick:

How are you using the platform going back to coaching? How are you using the platform to coach people who are struggling with the level of activity that is necessary?

Melissa Dawson:

So we have different coaching sections in NRGIZE that can help people with maybe a skillset that they’re needing to acquire, right? And then as a coach, we ask people, you know, what are your goals, what are your actions to get there? And if one of their actions is going to mean, I’m going to talk to five homeowners a day, we’re gonna show them different resources, and then we’re gonna have them commit to sharing, or in the NRGIZE App, it’s called “bragging”… sharing their brag with us that they did the action steps that they said they were going to do to achieve the results that they wanted.

Patrick:

That’s fantastic. Talk to us a little bit about email campaigns and email from a personal level versus a company perspective. Have you seen any impact in using email campaigns in the NRGIZE App?

Melissa Dawson:

Yeah, so with the NRGIZE App, they have great email campaigns. And one thing that we absolutely love about it is it comes from the person sending it, which is really huge, you know, so it’s not going to go get stuck in a spam folder, you know, the open ratio of how many people are opening and engaging is just huge, because if they met me on the street and my name’s Melissa, and this is my Gmail account, they want an email coming from Melissa at that Gmail account, not from some random MailChimp or something, I don’t know.

Patrick:

And you guys have more than a 35% opt-in rate, which is just crazy. I mean, when you think about email delivery, 2 or 3% is really good when a company tries to reach out to an individual. But to be north of 35%, that’s almost unheard of in email delivery. And I think in the solar space, it’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next decade, but it almost seems like you’re always talking to the wrong person, or the right person is just the wrong time. Their time isn’t yet, they’re not ready. Maybe they’re not in the right house, or the budget’s not right to do it, but sooner or later, right?

Melissa Dawson:

Right. It is about that. It’s always about timing with everything. And with that open ratio, that comes from being authentically sharing. It’s not just dump in a whole bunch of data into a MailChimp and hopefully something comes out. That’s being a human-to-human out there. I think as we see AI continue on, that authentic sharing is going to be of the utmost importance.

Patrick:

Have you found a way to measure when you’re coaching an individual, whether they’re struggling or doing well and just want to get to the next level, have you been able to identify a way to measure the difference between the quantity and the quality of the exposure? Like who is doing enough activity and who is struggling with the competency or the skill set? Have you found good ways to coach people through that?

Melissa Dawson:

Yeah, so using the RapidFunnel part of that platform, we’re really able to dive in and see the metrics. So we can see if somebody’s just sharing a video, are they getting to the point where that next person is opening the video? So that allows us as a coach to dive in to see, are they changing the wording on the front end, or what are they doing that the metrics are off, that somehow they’re not getting those emails open, right? So are they doing something odd in there? The videos are not being watched and that’s where it… really becoming that data collector helps us as coaches be able to dive in to see where might a breakage point be happening.

Patrick:

And how about on a personal level, your personal activity, you know, do you, where do you find, have there been increases? Do you think you’ve increased your personal activity by using the NRGIZE platform?

Melissa Dawson:

Yeah, so I definitely feel I’ve increased my activity, personal activity by using the NRGIZE platform because A, I don’t wanna look like a loser to my team. So I wanna make sure that I’m always on top of the leaderboard. Just like all those other leaders out there that have teams and are using some sort of platform, you know, we need to be the ones using it first and showing how. So it’s definitely improved my personal activity, because I like to be the winner.

Patrick:

You know, when Tiger Woods, the last time he won a major, it was Augusta, and he won the Masters. And I remember reading an article that week about Fortnite, the gaming platform, had paid out a multiple of whatever the Masters winnings, however tens of millions it was, I can’t remember, 12 million or something, that Fortnite had paid out more money that week in gaming, pay-to-play gaming, than the Masters had. And it was almost mind boggling to think that. And, and is there, you know, and that’s the fun part of being in the solar business, or any network marketing company. You’re paid to build your business. And what if we can start recognizing and gamifying the thing that drives the behavior more than anything, which is prospecting and follow up. And I think… you know, it is interesting. It’s just one of the hard things to get an organization to really buy into, that if they do the activity, they will eventually get the result. But I think sometimes people see leaders like you and think, well, I can never be Melissa, I can’t necessarily do that. How do you, by whatever means or shape, how do you mitigate that belief that people hold so tightly that maybe they can’t achieve the level of success that you’ve had?

Melissa Dawson:

Yeah, we do find that a lot that as humans, people are stuck with a very limited mindset belief and it’s really actually trying to help. That’s why we dive so much into personal development is to help them get over that limited mindset to realize that there’s no difference between me, and them, and Patrick. There’s nothing. The main thing, the difference is, I do the actions and the daily requirements to get to where I want to be in my dreams. And so when I’m talking to people, you know, and giving them these coachings and talking to them, it’s really figuring out what are their dreams? Where do they wanna go? So perfect example, when I started in the solar space in 2016, I was living in a rental house that I did not like. It was, you know, working for a corporate job that I didn’t like. My goals were expiring, not inspiring, right? But then I started with Powur and coaching with Jim Bunch and The Ultimate Game of Life and learning, like what is an inspiring goal versus an expiring goal? What’s not getting me to where I wanna go? Oh, it’s my own limited mindset. Okay, well, what do I need to do? So what I did was I figured out, I wanna have a life by design. I want a house overlooking the lake. I wanna live on my time schedule. I want location freedom, time freedom, financial freedom, inner freedom. I will do whatever it takes to get there, period. End of story. So I put that picture on my phone and I would not end my day until I prospected to the amount that I had committed to. I told my husband who was my accountability partner, I’m gonna buy us this house, I’m going to retire you and I’m gonna talk to at least five homeowners every day and I will find them no matter what. And guess what? I was, and I am still in a non-solar area. So some people could go knock, they could do whatever, but I wanted the location freedom, right? So I left every excuse at the door and that’s where I found my results. And I found my results in trackable, measurable success. And anybody else can take that same resource that I did, share it the same way, and they can have that success too. So the only thing that we can’t do… like when you, and I, and different people out there create tools, so that the people can stop being a tool and they can use the tool. We can give them all the tools they want, but if they don’t have a work ethic and if they don’t have a drive, and a passion, and a why, they’re not going to achieve success. But everybody else, anybody who has that, why? Like I wanted that location freedom. I wanted these things that got me unstoppable. And then I have a way to track all of my results to keep me on track.

Patrick:

That’s awesome. You know, you really hit on the two things. The longer I’m in the industry, the more you realize it really just boils down to two things as leaders. It’s our ability to create belief, to help people create a new story, right? The most powerful story they ever hear is the one they tell themselves about themselves. And second, is the accountability and the tracking. Like, will I do the work? Will I do the activity? And if they’re inspired, and they’ll do the work, and they have a system or a process… and they know what to do, it’s not really that difficult a business. That’s exciting.

Melissa Dawson:

No, and you just got to kind of grow maybe some thick skin in there. You know, did I have people hang up on me? Did I have people say all sorts of no’s and mean things? Yes, I did. They were horrible. But guess what? I still picked up the phone and I made another call because I hadn’t finished my tracker for the day.

Patrick:

Well, it kind of goes back to the first one, which is how big is the dream, right? And if the dream is big enough, you’ll pay the price. Melissa how, if people want to get in touch with you, listen in to your podcast, connect with you directly, how would they go about doing that?

Melissa Dawson:

Probably easiest would be to just look me up online, melissadawson.com. So melissadawson.com, that’ll have my Instagram, which is A Life by Design. If you’re ever into, if you love inspirational quotes and how to live a life by design, that’s my Instagram. Business development is my absolute passion, that’s on LinkedIn. But all of those are on my website, melissadawson.com.

Patrick:

That’s awesome. So that’s the fastest way for them to connect with you for any channel they want to. It’s all right there.

Melissa Dawson:

Yes, everything is there.

Patrick:

I love it. Melissa, thank you so much for taking the time to be on Beyond the Network Marketing Dream. It has been awesome being with you.

Melissa Dawson:

Well, thank you so much. Have a great day.

Important Links

• Everything Melissa Dawson
• Melissa Dawson LinkedIn

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