The Impressive Burnout of a Solar Panel Dealer

Aaron Colvin was he was doing tricep exercises at the gym when he saw a big bodybuilder in the screening room. The young man was training a woman through rope lines, and 18-year-old Colvin paused to learn their skills. When the bodybuilder caught him staring and shaking, Colvin worried. She thought she was about to be accused of stalking the man’s girlfriend – one of the cardinal sins of the gym culture.

But the bodybuilder just wanted to start a friendly conversation, when he asked Colvin what he got out of his life. At that time in August 2023, Colvin was about to start his freshman year at Niagara University, a small Catholic school near his hometown of Niagara Falls, New York. But he was warm in college; he wanted to commit to being an entrepreneur like Grant Cardone or Alex Hormozi, two of his heroes. At the age of 13, Colvin vowed to follow in their footsteps to ease the financial burden of his mother, a special education teacher who raised him with little help. As an impulsive young man, he started a series of one-man businesses that didn’t look good: a T-shirt seller, a carpet cleaner, an affiliate marketer, a downloader, an Amazon arbitrageur. He is currently working a day job at Chipotle and Pet Supplies Plus to save $3,000 for training on how to run a personal training business.

Colvin’s new friend wanted another chance: “You know what? of the sun?” he asked. When he wasn’t competing in the gymnastics division, the man said, he worked for Freedom Pros, the door-to-door sales force of Freedom Forever, one of the world’s leading solar power plants. The bodybuilder had just returned from a trip to Florida where he joined a group of “blitz” – many of the solar companies in sales events where groups of young men in bright polo shirts and khaki shorts descend on the city, and crash in a cheap hotel. or Airbnb, and spend weeks knocking on as many doors as possible. He boasted that he made “crazy money”—$20,000 in one month—by persuading a handful of homeowners to cover their roofs with solar panels.

Colvin, a former high school wrestler whose silver round sunglasses gave him a professional mien, was impressed. “I’m like, holy shit,” she recalls. “Like, yeah, weird, I’m looking.”

A few weeks later, Colvin had a FaceTime call with the bodybuilder manager at Freedom Pros, a 21-year-old named Will. Although his first semester of college had just begun, Colvin told Will that he was considering dropping out of school: As a troubled man, he and his mother once lived above a drug store in Niagara Falls that was often robbed by drug addicts. a difficult time relating to his classmates, many of whom came from cushier villages than himself. “I had a midlife crisis in my bedroom,” says Colvin. Will forced him to join his door-to-door sales force, which he named Seal Team Six. The project was a breeze, he said — a simple matter of letting homeowners know they could save thousands by installing solar panels and selling the excess electricity to the grid. As long as Colvin spreads the word while standing at the front door, his sales revenue is less than his salary at Chipotle. “Behind every door is $5,000” was the unofficial motto of Seal Team Six. (Freedom Forever says its 2023 total will top $1 billion.)

After some prodding, Colvin refused. He was worried that he would regret leaving school without shaking it. But Will was a hard worker. Almost every day in the fall and winter, he encouraged Colvin and Instagram Reels created by “solar bros” showing their six-person checks, their apartments, their exotic cars. These influencers—smooth, chiseled, and brimming with confidence—asserted that everyone can reap the benefits if they have the courage to change their everyday lives and live in the best ways of a green economy.