Our Reporter
When asked what his advice is for budding entrepreneurs, Moe’s answer is simple. “There are only three steps,” he says. “One, research; Two, take the plunge. And three, follow through.”
Moe has followed this formula to success several times in his life – most recently as the 25-year-old CEO and founder of Simple Solar, a company born in January 2020 which sold $25 million in its first year despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
From an early age, Moe was interested in one thing: making money. He quickly learned that he could do this by connecting consumers to products and services they really wanted, as conveniently as possible. His childhood hustle of mowing lawns – he eventually became a CEO at that, connecting neighborhood homeowners who wanted yard work done to neighborhood kids who wanted work – quickly scaled up into selling items on eBay, buying and selling used cars, and then buying and selling real estate.
“I didn’t have a lot of advantages,” Moe explains. “I didn’t do it because it was easy. In fact, I did it because my family never had enough money growing up. I never wanted to be in that position again, so I became obsessed with making money at an early age. And I found out you could do that by creating value, by giving people what they wanted.”
His first house was bought with proceeds from ten years of childhood hustles, and the move was spurred by desperation. “I’d been robbed at gunpoint in my own home,” Moe explains, recalling the terrifying incident from his college years. “I lost about $10,000 between the cash and the valuables that were stolen. I never wanted to be that vulnerable again. So I knew I had to sink money into something that couldn’t be stolen – a house.”
One might think that a 19-year-old with no knowledge of real estate buying a dilapidated house and flipping it sounds like a recipe for disaster. And it almost was. “Many times, I wanted to give up,” Moe recalls. “I’d seriously underestimated how much work it would take. But there was one thing driving me: I couldn’t afford to fail. No one was going to bail me out.”
Two years later, he sold the house for four times the price he’d paid for it. Invigorated by his first six-figure sale, Moe was approached by a family friend who was intrigued by the college student’s entrepreneurial spirit. “Come sell with me,” Moe’s first mentor told him, “and I’ll teach you how to make just as much money without breaking your back for it.”
Moe threw himself into learning door-to-door sales like he’d thrown himself into learning real estate flipping. But he soon encountered an unexpected surprise. “I was too good at sales,” Moe laughs. “That sounds odd, but it’s true. I sold more than the company’s supply line could actually deliver. Nobody had warned me that was a possibility. They ended up being unable to pay months’ worth of commissions I was owed because they weren’t able to collect final payments from the homeowners due to supply line issues.”
“I was so disappointed,” Moe recalls. “Not only had they failed me; they’d failed my customers who were waiting months and months for these products that they wanted, that would really have improved their lives.”
Such experiences led Moe to start his own company, Simple Solar.
“I was determined to create a place where my team could sell as much as they wanted,” Moe explains, “and customers would get timely and reliable service. I knew solar was the way to go because it’s such an amazing product. It saves customers money, gives them independence from the electrical grid, and doesn’t consume any fossil fuels. Who wouldn’t want to buy this product?”
Moe’s intuition proved right again. After training his team in his own sales and customer service techniques, perfected by years of passion and experience, Moe was soon connecting customers with tens of millions of dollars worth of solar panels. The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t slow his company down – and their team grew from five to forty people through door to door sales.
“In 2021, our goal is to sell $100 million,” Moe says calmly, “and I think it’ll be easy to achieve. Demand for this product isn’t going to go down in a time when people are thinking about saving money on their bills, being equipped for disasters, and fighting climate change.”
“Do whatever you do with your whole self,” Moe advises. “Real estate, sales, anything. People can achieve way more than they think they can when they go all-in. That’s what I do and that’s what my team does – and now people want to interview me, I guess.”
Moe’s self-deprecating honesty is refreshing in his industry – and maybe it’s part of what helps him sell.
“I really think the key in sales is being genuine,” Moe explains. “I’ll only sell a fantastic product that I really think will improve people’s lives. I think people can sense that.”
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