Lessons - From Employee to Entrepreneur | Jimmy Esparza - CEO of Renewable Power USA

So how did you pivot that mindset from working for somebody funding the best possible salary to which always will have some sort of cap on it to I want to start my own company in this space and I know the things that I have to do and I have to execute this and it and eventually it's all worked out and now I think it's what were you 44 on the ink 5000 one year right so that which is like that's that's a huge that's a huge completely different person to hit that 44th rank. Versus the person who took the the solar panel sales job, so evolution of you in solar. What what was that path? Yeah, so, you know, at the time I was a 20, the one years old and I needed some money, but after when that when my ship this chip came up right and I was like, you know what, I feel like I want to actually create my own business. I guess it comes from it came from my mom to like I think she engraved that into me like hey you should you know open up your own business so I always had that and back in my head. I just didn't know how right I never had an investor. My mom was a she was a she was an employee of the business, so she really she didn't really scale the business, but she did give me like the visuals like you know you kind of have your own time and stuff like that. So once I once like I got to six figures like doing door to door and I had some capital and that's really how long did that take it took me like I took me like seven months so I didn't take shit. Yeah, that's actually really quick. Okay, all right. Yeah, so you know once I started making you know some some good amount of income and my eyes right at that moment I was like oh shit, so I got some extra cash. Yeah, I got never seen this in my back account. So it's like now I started thinking like as an investor right so what am I going to do like I want this to keep on. I want to keep on you know creating this top income or even better income. So what should I do and that's where I started to get into like self development. Really deep right started reading tons of books and you know that really transformer transform like my mindset one of them the first one was a secret. Sure like yeah, yeah, yeah, that was like one of my basic one is like really you can really want you know you can really like set a go and you can really actually accomplish it and if you really believe into it and you put the right actions. It sounded pretty crazy but you know at that time but it's like I got believed into it believe in myself. I had some income and and I just started to set those goals. I was like I'm going to create my own business. I don't know how I don't know how much money is going to cut how much how much money I never really went through all those you know those details from a business right. Which it was you know which I'm grateful and I'm glad I really I didn't really get too much into those numbers because if I would it would evaluate all the whole thing like I would have never done it. It would have scared you it would have yeah they would have like it was like do like what what the hell are you thinking about just go ahead and you know create and make a quarter of a million just selling and you know and and that's it. I love that. I know I love the I love that sometimes like like being being naive actually enable success and I actually think that's actually a really smart point like sometimes like a little bit of because nothing's ever going to work out the way you want it to work out. And nothing's ever going to be a hundred percent. I think that almost going to a little bit of like like what's the what's the word. Like you're just like the bright eyed and bushy tailed or whatever the saying it's just like when you like look at something very optimistically versus pessimistically and I think that that's exactly what you're doing. It's actually what you have to do to be successful because if you ever evaluated the risks required to be successful. I don't think anybody would ever build their own thing. So you have to have that personality as an entrepreneur regardless of whether or not you manufacture it or it's just because you haven't put as much thought into the thing as you need to I think that's what it's actually led to success sometimes. But usually you jump into it. Okay, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. No, yeah, I did totally just jumped into it and I said, you know, I think I have what it takes, you know, I love, you know, dealing with people. I love to talk to people. I love. And in my previous positions, I was always in a, you know, I was a starter themselves and then they promote me to be a supervisor and manager. So I've done some of some of the, you know, dealing with people and managing people and coaching people. So I was like, yeah, I think I'm pretty good at it. You know, I think I've, you know, developed a few teams and, you know, helped them grow and help and, you know, transfer some of my skills to them. So, you know, I like that side of the business. So I was like, okay, that's what I have to do in the beginning. Then I'm, that's what I'm going to be doing. Just like I've already been doing it for, you know, for a few companies. I could, I think I could do it for myself. And then I was, I mean, and I think I will, you know, to me, it's, you know, I believe a lot of God tools, like I think it was the right time and he opened up a door for me as well at that time. I met one of the, at the moment right now, he's one of the biggest installation companies in the nation, you know, as far as solar goals. So they had like a year and a half in business when I met him. So they were not as big as, you know, they are right now. And they recruited me off of, sort of, sort of city, which it was, it was Tesla at the moment already is already bought off my Tesla. So, and I was like, you know what, I think I'm able to do this. You know, there's some things I don't like. There's some people that like I recruited a bunch of people, family members, cousins and to sell to sell, yeah. So there's some things that this guy some issues that they seen and so I came and we know we don't get enough attention. You're the only guy that's really training us. You're the one that's helping us close a lot of deals and identify some issues and I see I seen how I could actually improve them and by me having the chance to create my own business. You know, excited me to like help, you know, my family members because I got them off their jobs. I bought some of some of my family members from San Diego from other places to work in Arizona. So I felt like a responsibility. Greater than, you know, than than me wanting to be in business just because I wanted to be in business. You know what I mean. It was more of like forced yourself to have responsibility for other people. Yeah, exactly. That's super stressful. Yeah, it is. It is. And at the time I was thinking man, like this guy, he moved down from LA. He moved down from San Diego. This guy came from, you know, this call center that he was working on and you know, he stopped working there. So now I was like, shit, they're all looking. Yeah, they're asking me questions and they worry about their future, you know, so I was like, shit, so I got to do something and I have to create something, you know, better than what's going on here because, you know, seems like things are not going to be the same. And you know, in a month or two months, that's when Tesla acquired sort of city. Yeah. So there was a lot of changes going on at that time too. So, you know, everybody was like, hey man, they were looking up to me and saying like, what are we going to do? And I did some research in the market. I put myself in front of the right people. And that's how a little bit about, you know, how it started.