Aaron Colvin was was doing triceps pushups at the gym when he saw a cartoonishly large bodybuilder walk across a room with mirrors. The guy was guiding a woman through a set of cables and Colvin, 18, stopped to study their technique. When the bodybuilder caught him staring and rushed over, Colvin appeared worried. He thought he was about to be accused of flirting with a man's girlfriend – one of the cardinal sins of gym culture.
But the bodybuilder just wanted to have a friendly conversation, during which he asked Colvin what he did for a living. At that time in August 2023, Colvin was preparing to begin his freshman year at Niagara University, a small Catholic school near his hometown of Niagara Falls, New York. But he was quite indifferent in college; he wants to dedicate himself to becoming a businessman like Grant Cardone or Alex Hormozi, two of his personal heroes. At age 13, Colvin vowed to follow in their footsteps so he could ease the financial pressure on his mother, a special education teacher, who raised him without much help. As a fiercely motivated teenager, he ran a series of one-man businesses that never took off: T-shirt seller, carpet cleaner, affiliate marketer, delivery man Drop shipping, Amazon arbitrageurs. He is now working daily shifts at both Chipotle and Pet Supplies Plus to save up $3,000 for a course on how to run a personal training business.
Colvin's big new acquaintance wants to steer him toward another opportunity: “You know what? about solar energy?” he asked. The man said that when he's not competing in amateur bodybuilding, he works for Freedom Pros, the home sales arm of Freedom Forever, one of the leading solar installation companies. nation. The bodybuilder had just returned from a trip to Florida, where he participated in a “blitz”—solar industry slang for a sales event in which groups of young people wore polo shirts and khaki shorts head down to the city, crash into a cheap hotel or Airbnb and spend weeks knocking on as many doors as possible. He boasted of making “crazy money” — up to $20,000 in just one month — by convincing just a handful of homeowners to install solar panels on their roofs.
Colvin, a muscular former high school wrestler with round silver glasses that gave him a scholarly appearance, was curious. “I was like, oh my god,” he recalls. “Like, yeah, great, I'll look into it.”
A few weeks later, Colvin had a FaceTime call with the bodybuilder manager at Freedom Pros, an energetic 21-year-old named Will. Even though his college semester has just begun, Colvin tells Will that he's thinking about dropping out: He's a man shaped by hardship — he and his mother used to live above a pharmacy in Niagara Falls. , a place that is often robbed by drug addicts – he is facing difficulties. a difficult time involving his classmates, most of whom were in better circumstances than him. “I was having a midlife crisis in my dorm room,” Colvin said. Will forced him to join a door-to-door sales team he called Team Six Seals. The job, he says, is easy — it's a simple matter of letting homeowners know they can save thousands of dollars by installing solar panels and selling excess electricity back to the grid. electricity. As long as Colvin delivers that message while standing on strangers' doorsteps, his sales commissions will be lower than his salary at Chipotle. “Behind every door is $5,000” is the unofficial motto of Seal Team Six. (Freedom Forever claims its 2023 total revenue will reach $1 billion.)
After some consideration, Colvin declined the offer. He worries that he will regret leaving school without a fair change. But Will is a relentless recruiter. Nearly every day that fall and winter, he sent Colvin Instagram Stories produced by “solar brothers” showing off six-figure commission checks, penthouses , their exotic cars. These influencers—tanned, sculpted, brimming with confidence—emphasize that anyone can reap such rewards if they have the courage to trade their mundane lives to get a place in the front trenches of the green economy.