Green Ridge Solar – Turning Electrical Skill Into a Renewable Energy Company

Two years, was a lot of sleepless nights.

It was sleeping at the office because we didn't have time to go home.

There was too much to get done.

And there was a point, you know, just it was a few years ago that somebody came up to me, one of our managers was like, I can do this better than you.

And so I had a lot of coaches that said they cared more about coaching great men than coaching great players.

And I feel the same way with the people that we have employed with us.

Like, I did not fail.

I tried, you know, everything I could do to not fail was ingrained in me.

And so I think it's that feeling of when it's tough or there's challenges, I don't let myself fear anymore.

I immediately move to how are we going to get through this?

we inspire and encourage the next generation of free thinking leaders by telling the stories of those that have been there, done that, and are still getting it done.

Building a life that they love with their hearts, their hands, and their hustle.

I'm your host, Erick Loden.

Thank you guys for joining me today.

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algorithms and keeps things going so This morning.

I am really excited.

I am joined by Alex and Brian from Green Ridge solar

They are the co-founders of Green Ridge

Alex and Brian started out putting their electrical and construction knowledge to work serving their neighbors in the community and by helping with solar projects.

A few short years later, they run a successful company serving all of Oregon and Washington.

They specialize in providing superior service before, during, and after installation of only the top-end solar equipment.

So Brian and Alex, thanks for joining me.

How are you guys doing today?

You

Doing great, thanks for having us here.

Awesome.

Well, we will dive right in.

And this is the first time we've had two guests at the same time.

So we'll have to figure this out as we go together.

But we start off every show just getting a little bit of background.

And we like to roll clear back to the beginning.

So do you guys want to maybe take turns telling us a little bit about your childhood and how you guys met?

Sure.

Go ahead, Okay, I'll start.

right.

Childhood, huh?

All the way back.

Well, and I both grew up in Oregon for the most part.

So I grew up in kind of the Wilsonville, Sherwood area.

went to high school there, always been in Oregon, so nothing super special.

But yeah, let's see, was after our wives met, I think at a dog park, that Brian and I came to know each other about 10 years ago.

And my wife basically consequently, and Brian can tell a story better, worked for him in a brokerage for some time.

And Brian, don't you tell us the story on that.

Yeah, sure.

Alex's wife Rachel worked for me in a real estate brokerage that I was an owner in and we did kind of rehab, flip projects, new construction.

uh on top of the real estate side of things.

So I got to know Rachel really well.

At the same time, got to know Alex really well.

And him and I were at a, I think we were at a company dinner and we were kind of sitting next to each other and we were talking off to the side.

And this conversation of electrical came up and solar specifically.

And uh Alex being an entrepreneur before this as well as myself being one, we kind of just mesh really well.

and honestly I think it was that night, they were like, hey, we're gonna do something together and let's go figure this out.

So all the credit to our wives, Rachel, Alex's wife, and Taryn, my wife, they met, they made the whole thing happen.

And so yeah, was kind of a funny way to go about it, but we lived real close to each other and it just came together, so.

Cool.

um As far as me, no, no, just, as far as me,

I grew up uh in Sherwood as well.

Alex and I actually didn't know each other.

We're a couple years apart, but we were here around at the same time.

so I grew up here.

I college at University of Oregon after that and then came out of U of O.

played football there and so as I came out of school, I didn't quite have a great idea of what I wanted to do and my dad had been a journeyman electrician for his whole life and he

was a business partner in uh a separate controls automation company and he convinced me to stick around for a summer and kind of learn.

the ropes on some electrical stuff and I fell in love with it and got my journeyman license being an electrician and then fast forward to now I hold a master's license in

both Oregon and Washington and oversee that stuff for our company.

Okay, awesome.

So from the time you guys met, how do you go from wives meeting at a dog park, meeting for drinks or dinner, and then now launching a company together that seemed like a pretty

quick step, but what did those steps look like?

I think the I was I had another company at the time.

It was barely self-sufficient.

And so I think there was kind of this desire, you know, to maybe get into something else at some point.

And I think, you know, I'll be honest, like solar never crossed my mind.

And, you know, I'm sure most people that have run into solar companies, you know, the

the stigmatism behind high pressure door-to-door sales and kind of that whole thing.

We had no background in marketing and advertising and running our sales program.

And so I think what interests me at least was, I saw an opportunity in kind of an emerging industry in Oregon that was well supported, well funded.

Obviously, we're in Oregon, at least we're in pretty solar friendly political climate, if you will.

And so there was a lot of momentum in policy, know, government, even utilities wanting to adopt, you know, solar.

And so, you know, when we started talking about it, might.

And it really is probably something to look into.

And as Brian and I got to talk and know each other a little bit better, he was involved in his real estate business at the time.

I kind of took on more of the day to day as we started to build that out.

And yeah, mean, the rest is history.

can tell the story, of course.

But I just, I don't know.

It was a...

It's very rare that you meet somebody that you want to get in business with.

And then, and then to have actually successful relationship for 10 years where, mean, I can literally count on one hand the number of times, you know, Brian and I have argued,

yelled at each other.

I mean, types of things, like it's, it's really been a great relationship.

We're a yin and yang scenario.

We balance out each other well.

And so it was easy to decide to get into business together.

Huh?

Wow, that's uh like you said, that is a rare story.

We often hear the other side of those stories, kind of the nightmare partner scenario.

So that's great that you guys were able to work together that way.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's pretty unique.

mean, we've talked about this several times that...

We've built such a good relationship over the years.

If there was ever the next thing that we do, we always talk about being able to do that together because that balance that we have, think we see things very similar.

The way that we view the world, the way that we view business in general, but then our skill sets are we have enough crossover in what we do.

I know enough about the financials, the sales, the marketing aspect.

Alex knows a ton about that side.

And the opposite there, I know a ton about the technical, the electrical, the operational side, and Alex knows a fair amount of that as well.

And so we're able to balance that.

the other thing I think is really important is we work the company together as much as maybe some of the larger companies would disagree of this.

We kind of work the strategy and the CEO type of mentality together.

But then we kind of drop back down.

into our own lanes and oversee each portion of the business that we're in charge of and trust each other in both of those aspects so that you know when Alex makes a call I don't

need Alex to go and come to me and run past you know five details on why he decided to change the contract because it's gonna you know be a better fit for us and for the

customer right like I don't need that sign off and vice versa if I say hey I want to add three more guys to my field crews because

because we're in this tight spot right now.

I don't run that past Alex, right?

Like we understand and have that rapport and that history together that we both can stay in our lanes, but then come together and talk high level strategy and what that looks like

together at the top.

And I think that's what's made us so successful over the last 10 years.

We've been a slow, progressively growing company over 10 years.

And because of that, we're solid and we're around, unlike some of these really large uh national companies that we've seen kind of crash and burn.

over the last several years because they don't seem to be able to figure a way to maintain.

They only know how to grow.

Okay.

Yeah, that's pretty cool that you guys trust each other enough to kind of run your your own areas of expertise.

And did it start out like that in the beginning?

Or is that trust that's been built over the last 10 years?

that's good question.

think personality wise, I am a risk taker.

Alex will take risks, but he is a much more calculated risk taker than I am.

So because of that, my natural instinct with people is more of the trust people first, and then if you kind of screw me over, that's when I'm not going to deal with you anymore.

And I think Alex is a little bit more of the opposite, where he's going to be a little more reserved about how he trusts you first.

And then you earn his trust, and it moves on.

And so I think because we had that mentality, maybe initially I was more trusting in Alex.

But because he sees that I was, hey, oh you take the ball.

You take the ball.

I think that that helped build the confidence there.

It was fairly quick.

mean, we didn't.

I can think, like Alex said, handful of times in 10 years where we've had any type of heated discussion, just about everything else has been, hey, we see this in the same light

here, we're both 90 % in, let's figure out the last 10%, right?

So I think it's just unique and there's not a lot of those partnership stories that are out there.

So yeah.

Yeah, to put it in layman's terms, like if you go to Blackjack table, Brian and I are putting Blackjack together.

Brian and are putting on like $500, I'm going put on maybe $25.

That's kind of the scenario.

But no, everything he says is accurate.

It took a few years, I think, to really trust in our skills.

And then obviously, I would say we've developed new skill sets, which is...

know, life cycle of every entrepreneur, you have to learn things that you didn't think you would have to learn.

And so, you know, I think we naturally gravitated towards the things that interest us, but also the things that we're good at.

You know, I feel like it could almost be an attorney at this point.

Not something I never, you know, wanted to do necessarily, but you become proficient in the things that you need to for survival.

And I think also where you find interest in as well.

So.

Yeah, 10 years in such a highly regulated industry, you probably are qualified to be an attorney.

Yeah.

I often feel like I'm getting close to being a legal expert or an insurance expert and

Right.

run a roofing company.

can't even imagine electrical and then solar on top of that and everything you guys work with with local governments, federal governments.

There's a lot of regulation you guys deal with.

yeah.

Well, it sounds like you guys both had a pretty early entrepreneurial streak.

You know running working in real estate running a real estate company Alex you mentioned you had another Company and it sounds like both of your father's Kind of ran companies at

one point or another if not their entire career Did you guys always know that you were gonna grow up and be an entrepreneur and do your own thing or when did you kind of decide

that that was the route for you rather than uh Just getting a job and working for somebody else

Oh, man.

I mean, we both went to college.

always, I actually, my degree was in information systems, so IT with a business degree as well.

And, you know, I got out of that, out of the university and took a job with a company.

It was great pay, like there really was no downside to it, but I really

And IT has changed in 10 years, or 15 years significantly.

So it kind of evolved and then bubbled out.

And now you're seeing AI kind of take over a lot of development.

But I knew that I wanted to do something on my own at some point.

And I think it was after about a year of working for this company, I knew that...

Now was the time because if I ever bought a house, if I ever got married, like I was going to have things that I was responsible for that, you know, taking risks on a business just

may not be as appetizing.

And so I actually worked for, you've interviewed AMW, Architectural Metalworks, I think Grant in particular.

So Ken is my stepfather.

And so I worked for him growing up as a kid and, you know, it was always around the entrepreneurial, you know, ups and downs.

Um, but I think what I saw the most was just being available to, you know, drop in a moment to go take care of something, go do a family trip, um, go grab dinner.

mean, whatever it was.

And I knew that I wanted something like that.

Um, I knew that I was smart enough that I could put something together.

But I didn't know again exactly what it was gonna be in.

And so yeah, I think that was kind of the evolution of getting into business.

mean, it was pretty much a year after college, pretty much got into doing my own thing.

So.

For me it was kind of similar.

My degree was in economics and with a business minor and when I

Full disclosure all I ever wanted to do growing up was be a professional athlete and so Going to school and getting the opportunity to get a scholarship and play football.

That's really what I was there for I enjoyed the school I did learn some things at it, but at the end of the day I went with the the economics route and You know have a solid degree

that came out from that Did I apply that degree when I came out of school very much?

No, I think that the the trade background

uh in my family was really prevalent at an early age.

A uh long time when my dad and his business partner, Scott Kinney, they owned a company called Taurus Power and Controls.

And so they did power systems and control automation.

They had engineering in-house from an electrical side with Scott.

And then my dad was the VP of that company.

And he uh ran more of the electrical uh project management side.

of things as they grew things out.

And so during that time, know, struggling, you know, business, getting things off the ground.

My dad did a lot of work for his friends who were general contractors doing, you know, wiring subdivision houses uh on nights and weekends, right?

Because he had his electrical license and he had his, his own thing that was going on.

So we, my brother and I sat in the, in the minivan till 1030.

night, you know, parked on a subdivision street and my mom and my dad would would rope houses.

And then when we were old enough, I was in there too, pulling home runs through the attic, you know, that's bare, you know, it's all it's all framed up.

And he's like, I'm, you know, pull these 10 home runs across the vaulted ceiling here, right.

So now obviously, like, it's the 90s, a little bit different time, probably not something you're gonna see a lot of now.

But

that was really, I remember that so vividly as part of my childhood.

And so my dad was a grinder, he was a hustler.

And then eventually as their business really took off and became successful, he didn't have to do a lot of that side type of work uh or things like that down the road.

But just as Alex said with Ken, his stepfather, uh

you know, the ability to say, hey, we're taking this time.

We're going to go do this sports thing.

Hey, I'm going to be there at all the events.

I can't, I can't think of one time that my dad really missed any sporting event for myself or my brother because of, cause of work, right?

Like he, he always made time, um, and found that, the opportunity there.

He coached heavily all the way through, you know, middle school and high school.

So seeing that was really cool.

And at the time, I don't think I recognized it as much, but now as we fast forward to our adult years here, I see that being exactly how I'm able to offer the same type of uh

lifestyle for my family.

I coach my son's stuff, my wife has coached him and our daughters.

And so it's just a really cool cycle to see that.

And I think that's what really got us into doing our own thing.

I worked for six years as an electrician at Taurus, Taurus Power and Controls, and it was great.

I loved it.

They both had an opportunity.

Scott, his business partner, and my dad, sat myself down and Scott's son, Brian, who's a little bit older than me and he's an engineer, and kind of gave us the idea that this

could be passed down to us one day.

I was pretty young and I just thought, you know, I just don't

love doing this.

I think I want to try something on my own, that risk-taking thing on my own.

And I really was into construction at the time and trying to do, I did a couple of house flips with my wife and I, we did those together.

So that kind of took me away.

Brian stayed with the company and eventually took it over and sold the company and has done a fantastic job at uh Taurus, which is really cool.

So maybe if that opportunity came to me in my 30s, it would have been a different situation.

now, but at the time being, you know, 24, 25, I think, yeah, it about 25 that we were like, I got my journeyman license.

I'm like, okay, I think I'm going to go and do my own thing and just just stepped out on a, on a whim.

So that's kind

of how it went.

that's great.

Well it sounds like you guys uh both pursued a college education and with varying degrees of seriousness.

As you look back on it now was that a wise decision?

Would you go back to school or would you dive right into business or right into the trade?

And I know at the time, mean, again, education has or I think the need for education is changing.

The way we educate is changing.

Definitely at the time, I think it was the right thing to do for me personally.

It was it was a structured learning environment.

It pushed me, you know, to do and learn things that I probably wouldn't have otherwise.

I would say that you do refer back to your education.

through parts of your life and business especially.

I think in today's world, I'm not sure that I necessarily would have because I kind of knew that I always had that mindset of like, I wanna start my own thing if I had four

years earlier to go do that um and maybe go in and take, especially now with like IT, you can go in and get a.

intensive training program in six months done and then you're you know you're ready to go.

mean it's education needs to change I think and evolve to the way that our world works now.

I of course would encourage my kids to go eventually we've got three kids but I don't know if it's as necessary for certain types of industries like it used to be so yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

feel pretty similar to that, mainly because I saw both ways with what Alex is talking to.

I saw a background in going to college, getting a degree, kind of one of those degrees that's a little bit open-ended in economics.

You can take that in several different directions.

I think Alex's degree had some specialization in it that kind of already was driving him down a certain industry path.

And for me, it was a little more open-ended.

And then when I come out of school, at the time it would have been 2010.

And so as we come out in 2010, the job market is still kind of recovering from 08, right?

And so there's not a lot of opportunity that was just out there in people's faces to explore different options for me.

And so the option to kind of stay home for that summer and work.

uh...

make a little bit of money and then and then move on that was kinda my dad's suggestions okay come and work for me see what this is about if you like it maybe there's an

opportunity there if you don't moved to where we can move cross country go do you think right that he was always extremely supportive of of all the decisions i made because of

that but that i want to trade school and trade school

My view on all of this has definitely changed.

The cost of college now is so expensive, unless you have a specialized degree that's gonna lead you down the path, lawyer, doctor, something maybe very specific in the IT security

realm.

These types of things that are very specialized, I feel like the education system right now is still justified in my opinion for those types of things.

However,

to go and get a political science degree or an economics degree.

They're good things.

You learn some stuff.

You get a better understanding of the world.

But most of those kids that are there doing that, it's an experience for them to go and do.

And at $100,000, $200,000, $400,000 to do that, I don't think that it makes a lot of sense for those types of degrees, no.

I have people who when I went into trade school, I started at the very, very bottom as a level one apprentice.

I get a portion of the state's journeyman wage for electricians, right?

And while I do that schooling, I have to track 8,000 hours of work experience as well as I want to say it's five or 600 classroom hours, but you work full time while you're doing

that.

So you go to that school on the nights.

on the weekends to make up those school hours and you get to work full time.

So not only you building your physical skill set, you're learning at the same time and you get to see what's applied in the school out into the field on a daily basis.

And because of that, I was 20, what 20 or 21, 21 when I went into the apprenticeship program.

I had people who are good friends of mine who went in at the same time as me who are 18, some of them 17 who had just graduated turning 18 coming that beginning of the school

year.

And they went through the program with me with, you know, a three, four year head.

start in life.

We both get a journeyman license at the same time.

get our cards at the same time, you make a really doable wage.

I was able to buy a house when I was 23, right when my wife and I were dating.

And we got to do that together and close on that house right before we got married.

That was, you know, it was just a really good overall experience.

And I highly recommend it, whether it's electrical, plumbing, know, welding, uh pipe fitters, you know, even equipment.

operators, you know, all of these different things.

Like, I think for a long time people would be like, well, if you don't go to college, you kind of go down this route of these other jobs.

And now the landscape has changed where I feel like the other jobs are equal to or more than important than other aspects that we see from the college front.

So I think the most successful people that I know have all been people who have grown some type of blue collar industry business and have really taken it from there.

And even when we see it in large scale Fortune 500, like there's the owners of that, the founders of those.

You'll see so many stories of people who dropped out of college, didn't go to college, learned on experience, had this great idea in a garage.

And I think...

the majority or more of those types of businesses are founded by those people who are just go-getters and not necessarily the most educated.

You become the most experienced, which then leads you to be the most educated.

But at the end of the day, experience overall is really what I feel about it.

Yeah, you guys kind of nailed my feeling as well.

I was there about the same time frame and same generation and decided to go to college and then don't use my education very much anymore.

And I feel very similarly.

think the landscape there is changing and man, starting life without a career and a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt is not a great way to start.

And I think people are figuring that out.

So.

It'll be interesting to see what happens over the next few years and that experience, that maturity that a lot of people gain in college.

think there's a lot of places you can go to get that.

And like you said, a trade school is a great place that you're on your own, you're working.

Maybe even better instead of being surrounded with a bunch of dumb college kids like yourself, you get thrown in the trades with some more mature guys that have been there for

a few years and the peers that you learn from.

Actually know a little bit about life instead of just the next frat party

Right.

Yeah.

Amen.

Awesome.

Well, we got quite a bit of background there.

I want to learn a little bit about this business.

So it sounds like you guys started from pretty humble beginnings, kind of just helping neighbors, helping people, and have really grown it into quite a business.

Can you tell me a little bit about that process, how and where you got your start, and what you've done to grow it the way that you have?

Yeah, go ahead,

Oh, yeah, we started, so it was 2006, it was our 10 year anniversary year.

yeah, much like I think anybody that starts a construction company, Hummel Beginnings, you're doing everything.

You're running all the hats, making all the calls.

And in the beginning, was actually, when we started Greenridge, we had

partner involved.

and

know, the first couple years, was kind of just figuring out.

mean, we originally had partnered with a company out of Utah that wanted us to basically do all their install operations in Oregon.

And that process was grueling.

We made so many errors.

We made so many mistakes.

We thought we had, you know, things dialed in.

went through the permission to operate and getting the utility to approve our projects.

It took months and months and and countless hours to just get even the first couple of deals done.

And then as we started to figure that out, we're like, okay, we can do this.

We just need more sales volume.

And was about that time in the first, I think it was the first year that company ended up just.

torpedoing all of their out of state deals that they had.

They fired off, you know, fired a bunch of people, come to find out there was a bunch of embezzlement by one of the primary owners.

And so the whole thing just, just nuked overnight.

And we're like, we've got guys, we've got trucks, we've got, you know, rent payment.

Like, what are we going to do?

You know, are we just going to fold?

Like we had, you know, I think

I think we had borrowed like $25,000 a piece.

And at the time it was like, that's like my life savings.

That's a down payment on a house.

We can't walk away from that.

And so it was towards the end of that first year that we decided we were going to do this ourselves and not just make this kind of a side hustle.

Because we had, again, we had both had businesses at the time.

And that next year,

Two years, was a lot of sleepless nights.

It was sleeping at the office because we didn't have time to go home.

There was too much to get done.

We invented an entire marketing automation platform, a setting process internally for all of our leads to gather appointments, validate customers and sites.

We did sales, you know, we knocked on doors for a short period of time.

That was kind of like the only way we could get people to, you know, respond to us all the way through the sales process.

And then, you know, we were doing installs alongside the guys for the first, you know, first year or so.

And then eventually, you know, as things started to take off, we were able to take some step back.

That first couple of years was really, really tough.

And I think we hit the industry early enough that there was enough kind of funding involved, not just from a standpoint of like tax credits, but the state had, through

Energy Trust of Oregon, they had rebates and things like that.

and the Department of Energy had something going on too.

We were able to kind of use that and reinvest, you know, the earnings of the company back into growth and

You know, for the first couple of years, I mean, we were we were about 50 to doubling.

So 50 percent growth to doubling the company year over year.

And then we got to a certain size and we kind of said, you know, this is this is this is not sustainable.

Right.

Like we've kind of hit that limit.

And and then we started to get serious about, OK, we need we need to our financials.

We need to know, you know, what's our what's our, you know, what's our 30 day plan, 90 day plan?

one-year plan, what's our three-year plan, what does ten years look like?

We really need to start planning this out.

And I think at that point it was, you know, we were kind of starting to figure out like our roles were going to change significantly.

The things that we need to be focused on were the business, not necessarily being in the business every day.

And that's, you know, again, that's kind of how we got started.

Yeah, the first four years, Alex and I both were still running and operating our other businesses at the same time as well.

So what we had done, which is pretty unique, I think, is that we didn't take a dollar out of the company for pretty much four years.

We weren't on a salary.

weren't on any of that.

We just made sure that we could do enough in our other businesses to pay the bills for our families.

mean, I.

I sold my house, I sold a condo, an investment condo, everything to the point where I even, moved back, my family moved back in with my parents for a amount of time there just

to be able to make sure all this was gonna go together.

so we did not take a dollar from the company for four years.

And I think that was a really, it was a tough decision for both of us,

saw that we could run a good business, but it was a necessary one that has really set us up for the mindset that we have now 10 years into the game.

And that was, I think that was a really...

kind of a unique experience for the both of us to see exactly how far it goes when you could just constantly reinvest back into your company, back into your company.

But our heads down the whole time, like working in the company and not working on the company.

as you probably know, when you start a business, you're good at the thing, the end result product that you're doing, right?

That's what makes you great because you're like, hey, we got this down.

And that's what we kind of found very quickly that we were really solid at making sure our installs

for quality, we did a good job, we would learn and you have some mistakes and learn along the way but we felt like we were delivering something that other people weren't able to

deliver.

So our heads are working every day just trying to turn the next dollar to make sure that the company can keep going instead of stepping back, looking at our balance sheet, looking

at our financials, having a proper strategy on how we want to spend that money.

Where do we reinvest it?

Not just, you know, cash flow is king in a type of business like ours.

Making sure that you manage that in a way where seasonality gets a little hotter and then things cool down at certain times of the year that you can manage that kind of ebb and

flow that takes place.

So I think

that first four years was like the defining moments for us as a business to really understand and then we turned the corner on the quality of growth the year following when

we really started to focus working on the business and growing it in a way that was sustainable for the long run.

Okay.

Yeah, man, with those first four years like that, no wonder you guys are such close partners that would really uh solidify that partnership relationship having fought through

all of that together.

So, um wow.

And it sounds like you guys both just went all in.

sacrificed a lot, gave everything you had to this.

What was it about this business or maybe the solar industry that made you guys think this is the one, this is what we're going all in on?

I think it was the way that we run the business.

We both came from uh construction backgrounds, right?

Alex's stepdad had uh the sheet metal, architectural metalworks, sheet metal and installation.

He saw that growing up.

I saw my dad doing the same thing at Taurus.

And we had both been around construction enough and have done enough construction projects to know that, hey, this is kind of the blueprint for how a construction company should

run.

When we looked out at the solar industry, what you saw was very few construction companies or very few solar companies running as a real contracting business.

They were all running as sales organizations that had several subcontracted agreements with maybe two or three different companies.

Maybe that company was the actual install arm for now.

10 different sales organizations throughout the country and they're subcontracting out all of their labor to do their installs, right?

Or they have someone who's on the doorstep pressuring someone to make a sale, you know, kind of doing things in an unethical way that now leaves a really poor, bad experience for

the customer as it gets handed off to the person installing who now says,

I'm just here to install.

I can't tell you anything about your loan or where your money went or anything like that, right?

So we saw that at a very early point in the business.

That's where the industry was.

And we said, why?

Why do it that way?

Why not just be an electrical contracting business that happens to specialize in doing solar projects?

So let's run it that way.

Let's run it with a job costing to every job, set up with a way where we're tracking hours on every project, have reasonable commission structures for people who sell for us.

And so that was really what I think turned the corner for us and made us interested in doing that.

There was this gap of this quality installation contractor for solar.

that would care because we live in the industry or in the areas that we're working, right?

We're living in Sherwood, we're living in Tualatin, we're living in Wilsonville.

If we're servicing these people and I run into you at the grocery store and I left 25 holes in your roof and it's leaking everywhere, that's not a very comfortable situation

for me as the business owner when I walk through that store and I run into you, right?

That I think was, in my opinion, kind of the defining thing that we saw this gap that was was niche enough that we could build a business out of it.

And now I think Alex and I both agree that we feel the industry is starting to really shift in that direction.

The companies that are around that are doing well are quality companies that take care of their customers, that don't just look at you as a flash in the pan sale that I've knocked

into you on a doorstep.

They want to educate you and then really show you what the benefits both financial

environmentally and for your energy independence are available for you.

Maybe just one comment on that.

think so.

Brian summed up a lot of what I was thinking, but I think for me it was the technology.

So again, IT, my background, I'm a tinker.

I've always involved in, I've been involved in tech in some way.

The technology behind solar changes every six months.

There's improvements every six months.

There's changes in product.

There's changes in code.

There's changes in.

know, efficiency, whatever it is.

for me, although it's a little bit of a stressor, because like just even having an old, you know, old stock of something, it becomes obsolete really in about a year and a year,

year and a half.

Like that's the that's a product evolution cycle in the renewables industry.

And so it's been fun to stay on top of that.

And even though I'm not a licensed electrician,

I've become so well versed in the hardware and the firmware and commissioning and troubleshooting.

It's just kind of always satisfied this need of being involved in a tech business.

It's just a different product.

So yeah, it's very unique.

There's very few industries that kind of go.

through that amount of stress every year and changes and evolution.

So staying on top of that has been fun.

Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting to me.

feel like that trend is almost the opposite of what I see in a lot of roofing markets is they're moving more towards the sales organization that then utilizes subcontractors to do

most of the work.

It'll be interesting to see which model wins out there.

So it sounds like you guys have been really successful kind of bucking the flow and doing your own thing and it makes sense to be able to provide better service to your customers,

better quality, and probably a little bit more stable life for your employees as well.

Yeah, that's been huge.

We take a lot of pride in being able to offer those opportunities to people and have them be on board with us.

One of our longest tenured employees has been here almost the whole time and he started with us when he was 18 and he just started as, you know, a grunt in the field.

And now he's been able to work his way up.

He's a lead uh installer.

He handles lot of quality control and safety stuff for us.

And at the same time, he's been able to put himself in a position to buy a house on his own and all these things that, you know, he came to us when he was uh younger saying, I

don't know if those things are in the cards for me, right?

It's been really cool, really cool to see.

That's awesome.

That's really great.

So Alex, you kind of dove in a little bit with, like you said, the changing technology and the stressors in the industry.

I'm somebody I know very little about solar at all.

Most of what I know or understand is frustrations with people that poke holes in my roofs.

um And then just when I catch little clips on social media or whatnot, can you guys?

Maybe give us some insight into the development of the solar industry over the last decade and some of those technological changes and then maybe I know you guys are kind of in the

middle of a lot of governmental and regulation changes as well.

How has that affected your business to date and how does that affect things moving forward?

We're gonna need like probably two more hours.

exactly.

Ha ha!

No, at a high level, the product and technology has hit that cross point, if you will, on a graph of where the cost of the product and what it can do and how long it can last has

definitely crossed the return on investment threshold that most people have to make it work.

was that was one of the big questions was I know, at least in the circles I'm in, that was the thing for a long time was without the government subsidies, solar doesn't make sense.

It doesn't pay for itself.

But the technology is finally caught up and we're kind of crossing that threshold now.

Yeah, so the cost of the product has come down a fair amount.

know, competition, you have worldwide manufacturing competition, inverters and things like that.

Panels really, mean, panels basically last as long as you have them on your roof.

I mean, they're now warrantied to be 25 to 30 years from the manufacturer against performance and defect failures.

So.

Not much that goes wrong with them.

If they work from day one, they're probably going to last you the 25 years.

Inverter technology, inverter technology has come, you we're at a point where we're talking about 99.8 % round trip efficiency on inverter equipment at max capacity.

I mean, there's not much more you can do to improve that.

I think the next evolution in our product is

There are some different cell technologies that are coming out, different chemistries and material make-ups that I think will eventually hit the market that can take us even higher

efficiency.

But we've kind of peaked out with what we have available today at a reasonable cost.

The other thing that's really evolved in our industry is energy storage.

So batteries in particular.

We do...

I mean, we're one of the largest, at least for the Energy Trust of Oregon, we're a partner with them.

We're one of the largest battery suppliers in the state of Oregon for home backup, know, resiliency type stuff.

And that technology has had in last five years, just billions and millions of dollars invested in new chemistries, better and longer cycle counts um on your materials, better

power.

are really getting to a point again, cost of energy per kW of storage has really gotten to a point where, do I want to spend the money on a generator or do I want to spend just a

little bit more on a battery?

We're kind of, crossing that threshold.

And I think for me, it was the day that we found out that Generac was investing in solar and specifically storage.

That's when I kind of said, you know, they see it as much as everybody else.

And if those guys are starting to build.

Yeah.

think that's, yeah, I mean, that's really on the technology side.

mean, that's kind of where we're at today.

Brian, I don't know if you have something else you want to throw at that.

Yeah, no, that's kind of the gist of it.

think the next piece to your question is like, subsidized versus not subsidized.

What does that look like from the government standpoint?

I will say that from day one, Alex and I saw there was some benefit to having an FDIC, a federal tax credit that was available for residential customers for their solar.

And that tax credit's always...

averaged right around 30 percent.

Different administrations over last 10 years, was a sliding scale at one point, it teared up and teared down, but overall it's roughly about 30 percent is what the federal tax

credit was for a customer.

That was a solid program that's been around.

However, we saw pretty early on the evolution of the technology moving in this direction.

And so I think Alex and I had a pretty firm

belief that this industry needs to stand on its own two feet.

And when those subsidies go away, we need them to stay away, right?

And so what has happened here as of last year, when the Trump administration passed the big, beautiful bill, they...

They daylighted that program and they finished it.

As the end of 2025, there's no longer a federal tax credit for residential customers.

Now...

There's been, through the industry, a little bit of a tailspin because of how it went about.

Having it cut off, just have a dead stop, there was no type of phase out initiative.

It left manufacturers scrambling, it left installers scrambling.

It had a huge upward pressure on sales for the entire country because people wanted to take advantage of this tax credit before the end of the year.

And so all of those things kind of made this perfect storm for 2025, right?

But our thought was as the industry evolves here and this tax credit fades out, the competitiveness, the pricing, the quality of the installation, the different product

offerings being able to be battery storage or EV charging, are these types of things that go along with a uh solar product?

Those are all important aspects to the business that can help you sustain something that changes so quickly when something like the tax credit drops out.

Go ahead,

Alex.

other comment around that is our relationship to energy has changed a lot in the last 15 years.

I used to be, power was so cheap in Oregon, incandescent bulbs, baseboard heat, you can leave stuff on, you can have a hot tub and it's still affordable.

Like our cost of power was...

so inexpensive and the way that we generated our power was was, you know, honestly, very renewable hydroelectric and things that we hopefully we never lose those due to politics

and lobbyist groups.

But honestly, you know, coal fire, natural gas, like we were doing the right things as the state has evolved in policy over the years.

And we've started to remove some of those facilities.

Cost of power has gone up.

It's gone up significantly and the biggest driver behind that has actually been liability.

The utilities really started to wake up when we had the massive uh fires down in California and PG &E basically got sued into bankruptcy and state of California, if I'm

not mistaken, had to go in and basically buy them out.

That changed the liability and the responsibility for utilities to provide high quality, safe power delivery.

And if you look at Oregon's infrastructure, I think they've gone about it the right way.

If it's not broke, don't fix it.

Let's not spend extra money that we don't have to.

that has changed significantly to where now everything has to be upgraded because you have have transformers and power lines that have been out for 60 years that haven't changed and

there's new technology to improve the reliability and the safety of that equipment and so that was kind of the the last five six years we saw a lot of you know increases you know

oregon was typically about three percent a year increase so just keeping up with inflation

We've seen anywhere from 18 to 25 percent annually for about on average for about the last five years.

Data centers have played into this as much as anybody wants to say yay or nay on that.

We've given away a lot of energy infrastructure upgrades to the data centers and those that operate the data centers.

And that has come back on the rate payers.

was kind of done without anybody knowing.

so cost of energy, guess is what I'm getting at, has gone up a lot.

And what we're now seeing is that, especially in business scenarios, which we do a lot of commercial solar systems,

is that a lot of your bill is actually made up not by the kilowatt hours that you consume, but the amount of instantaneous power that's delivered to your site.

like, as an example, if I'm a manufacturing facility, which is really common for us to go into now, I may have, you know, a $50,000 a month bill.

But 25,000, 20, 25,000 of that is due to the amount of peak current that I demand at some point during the day, the week, the year.

And so I get charged a lot extra for the utility to be ready to deliver that in a moment's notice.

And so a lot of people don't understand that.

lot of businesses don't understand that.

What they see is my power went up 100 % in three, four years.

I got to stop this, you know, this is is eroding profits.

This is eroding into my costs.

And and so now what we're seeing is this evolution.

I mean, as a company, we do residential.

That's what we started with.

We spun off about three years ago.

division that commercial division is scaling like crazy.

As businesses become aware of how power costs them money and how they use that power, not only are we providing solar, but we're providing battery infrastructure to mitigate loads.

We're looking into doing capacitor banks for high, high discharge scenarios.

and even working with the on-site equipment to help regulate how many loads get turned on at a given time to try to keep us out of that excess power demand.

So solar is a lot different than the average person thinks.

The conservative mindset, the liberal mindset, I hate that we're in that because at its pure form,

We see ROI, especially on commercial now, of anywhere from three and a half years to maybe seven years.

There's not many investments businesses can make that get you a return on investment like that.

And then after that three and a half to seven years, every single year, that power is virtually free.

People just are not aware of that and it's awareness campaigns that we're doing now to get people to at least look at their bill and say, what's going on here?

Because just paying that is you don't have to do that anymore.

Yeah, education of the consumer is huge.

It sounds like it.

And so you said three and a half to seven years for most commercial applications.

Is it similar numbers for residential as well?

Residential depends, usually with commercial buildings, you have a lot more space to put panels on.

So you can pick the best or ideal, you know, roof surface or ground mount, depending on the type of business.

Residential is a little tougher because you're dealing with smaller footprints.

And so usually a lot more.

roof pitches in different directions.

So ideally we want to be south facing roof at about 30, 35 degrees in Oregon.

That's kind of our peak, if you will.

And so if you're able to accomplish that on a typical roof.

residential, even without the tax credit, we're still in the six to probably about 10 years is kind of the maximum that we want to go after.

mean, if somebody's like, hey, this is never going to pay you back unless you have some other ulterior motive, like it doesn't make sense, right?

We have lots of trees.

We have a of, you know, a lot of things that sometimes we can't make that project work.

But it's about six to 10 years on average.

and that's without, you know, again without the tax credit which to Brian's point like tax credits just bring bad actors in our opinion.

I've watched, we've watched this industry for again 10 years and tax credits all they do is they bring higher prices unnecessarily and they bring people in that just want to make

a lot of money uh and

uh We're kind of glad the administration finally put a stop to this.

I'm a little concerned it'll be brought back if we have, you know, administration change.

Guarantee it brings back companies that, you know, shouldn't be involved in this industry.

It's satisfying to see like even in 2026, we're still selling residential work.

We're selling commercial work.

So like it's proven itself to us that it's going to continue and it's going to stay.

But

Yeah, tax credits are not needed in solar.

you're probably, we're probably like the two of the guys that you'll hear, like probably the only two guys you'll ever hear say that.

It's time to move on.

I don't want us to be tied to this anymore.

And if it comes back, I guarantee it just brings back bad

actor.

m

billions of dollars are in this industry and it can stand on its own two feet.

There's adjustments made by every company from the biggest manufacturer down to the smallest installer, but the reality is it levels it out.

It puts us in a good position.

And then it's going to promote better performers, people that want to be around for the long run, quality that goes a long way.

So that's how we feel.

Yeah.

Well, that's, yeah, I love hearing from somebody kind of inside the industry that knows a little bit more because like said, most of my information comes from social media or

unreliable sources and we get to hear it straight from the horse's mouth here.

So I think hearing what you guys said, sounds like

Solar maybe would not have been as politicized as it has without the tax credits.

If it indeed can stand on its own two feet and is now cost effective, there's probably a lot of people that were not real excited about it that would get on board.

Like you said, just getting customers educated and people educated on where it's going and what it can do.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, that's great.

All right.

Well, we'll dive back into your guys' process of building the business.

We talked a lot about getting started and a little bit about solar.

Before we do that, actually, I had one other question.

I guess your typical solar install, Alex, you mentioned you're adding batteries and...

new technology has come in that's improved and maybe just changed the installs.

What does a typical install look like?

What does the system look like and how does it work for somebody that just doesn't understand at all?

Yeah.

Well, why don't I talk about part of it and then Brian can maybe hit the technical.

You know, we get asked that all the time, right?

Like, what's this going to cost?

I always tell people, what's a bathroom remodel cost or a kitchen remodel?

Like, it can be 20 grand, it can be 150,000.

So it really depends on the site and it depends on the end goal of the consumer or the business that's buying it.

What we typically see in our market, and this is not indicative of all markets, it's also not indicative of all companies, we see average systems just solar.

They can be in the 20, $25,000 range, up to somebody that is consuming enough power to probably power two or three homes.

Those can be over $100,000.

So it really just depends on the consumer's use of power, how much.

And then again, if you're adding batteries into that mix, know, we primarily in Oregon, so Oregon and Washington actually are very similar because we operate in Washington as well.

We are a one-to-one net metered utility jurisdiction.

So any power that's produced is

calculated or tracked as kilowatt hours.

It's put back on the grid or it's consumed at the home site locally.

And our utilities basically interchange those kilowatt hours with us and they bank credit.

But the credit is not dollars, it's kilowatt hours.

And so because of that, we are not required to have batteries to make solar work.

So a lot of our customers are buying solar with batteries for the resiliency component.

Brian get in more of the technology, but essentially we're able to now provide power indefinitely to a consumer that has lost power, whether it's a massive outage, if it's a

catastrophic event where, in Oregon, we have fear of major earthquakes and knocking out bridges and power systems.

These systems can literally power your home.

for as long as the sun is still shining.

And what's crazy about that is like, we both have systems at our homes, like we both have batteries, we both gone through, you know, up to seven days, six days worth of outages.

And like, it was amazing to be able to prove that this actually can work.

I actually have a little tiny home that runs off solar and batteries and it's been that way for better part of a year.

uh

So the technology is there and the reliability is now there.

And so it's, uh like I said, there's some benefits into that.

It kind of depends on the consumer, but Brian, you can probably touch more on the other side of that.

Yeah, I think to simplify it, people look at solar and battery as a compatible product that we can use to do what Alexis says, provide resiliency and energy independence.

That's what our focus is here.

Now we're going to speak to our market specifically in the Northwest.

It is different in a southern market.

It's different down in Southern California and down in Arizona.

You got a lot more sunny days and it does affect things.

What people say to us all the time is, I didn't even know that solar could work, you know, in the, in the Northwest.

Because you get so much rain, you get so many clouds, right?

And the simplest way say, well, you get sunburned at the beach even when it's cloudy, right?

So you have UV rays that still come through.

The technology and the absorption levels of the cell technology on a solar panel are constantly improving, but are really, really good.

So you're able to pick up in low light conditions.

You are still able to generate energy.

So that's in a nutshell why it still works here, right?

Same exact concept.

We may have to have a little bit larger system.

Maybe down in California, a normal home needs 10 panels to operate and offset someone's power bill on their 1,500 square foot house, right?

Up here, we're looking at, let's say we have to add maybe three or four more panels to do the exact same thing, right?

That's kind of where,

I'm assuming that that would be better there in the northwest you guys are kind of you're almost testing like the worst case scenario So if you're seeing a three and a half to

seven year payout in the northwest those times would probably Shorten in other parts of the country.

Is that accurate?

Yes, the detail behind it is really what I was going into, is about 98 % of the solar customers out there are interconnected with the utility grid.

You got to get approval if you're going to be tied into a utility grid that's going to help offset your bill in any way, shape, or form.

Alex mentioned before in the Northwest, they have a one-to-one net metering program.

What that looks like is essentially for every kilowatt hour that you produce, you can offset something that you can consume.

And they just do that at a direct one to one ratio.

Now other parts of the country, specifically down south, because the solar is so good, the utilities actually have to, they have different requirements in place there.

They maybe give you only a portion of what that value of a kilowatt hour is worth.

or they have time of use profiles, which would be, we're gonna charge you uh more money for your power supply to your home during the peak hours of the day where most people are

using it, and we charge you less at midnight when no one is using it, right?

And so what that's led to is it's not a direct correlation to having like the same type of ROI and then directly dropping that down for someone, let's say in Southern California or

in Arizona or in Texas.

It's really based on the utility that you are interconnected with.

So if everything was just one-to-one across the country, the answer would be yes, it would be a direct correlation to seeing a much faster rate of return for areas that get more

power.

uh more generation through sunlight in a given year, right?

So the reason why it is still very viable for the Northwest is because we have a favorable net metering policy and then as well as the ability to have batteries and the batteries

were really started down in Southern California to help offset the time of use situation that's going on.

If there was no solar

uh present and you had a let's use a Tesla Powerwall, their very first version so to speak as an example, down in Southern California that's where they rolled out and they're

essentially a battery that's attached.

The premise is I'm going to charge this battery from the utility grid when my power is the cheapest at midnight and then it's 7 p.m.

the next day when everyone's using their power and the cost of power is so high I'm an actually

use the battery power that I've stored and apply that to what I'm consuming in my home to keep the cost down.

So that was the kind of first evolution of batteries.

Now batteries are at a point where you can have different profiles set up for that based on...

the pay scales and the metering schedules that are available to you at each utility.

You have them up here where that time of use isn't as prevalent in the valley where we're at.

And so most people use solar in more of a resiliency standpoint for an outage, for storms, for those type of emergency situations.

And just being able to have some peace of mind for the reliability and energy independence in case that wasn't available.

So that's kind of how it works.

Technology wise, the very simplest terms, you have those solar panels that are absorbing UV and are creating DC electricity, right?

DC power, just like you would have in your car battery.

And then that power has to be inverted into AC.

That is what is used in all of our homes.

across the country and our commercial facilities.

So that inverting technology is different amongst different manufacturers, but at the simplest form, there's uh an inverter, a brain of the operation that's going to invert

that power from DC and turn it into AC.

Now, Alex said before the technology has come a long way where in the past, the efficiency of being able to do that

would lose a lot in heat, right?

That cost energy to be able to do that.

So you would lose a lot in heat dissipation and losses, essentially.

Now, the inverting technology out there is in 98, 99 % efficiency levels across most manufacturers.

And so because of that,

you get to see a true conversion that's taking place from AC to DC.

so, yeah, and then there's the same concept with batteries.

You can have batteries that are connected on the AC side of a grid, or it can be connected on the DC side.

And what that allows that to do is you can have your solar panels directly feed into your batteries and charge those batteries first, then come through the inverting components and

turn it to power used in the home.

um So that allows like a direct correlation there, which minimizes a loss that takes place when there's no conversion that has to take place from DC to AC going into the battery.

Or you can have a battery that's set up on the AC side of that.

You'd have your inverter that's already inverting the power to AC and then goes into the battery from there and then can be consumed at any given time for the customer's needs.

So kind of.

Real basic terms, that's how the structure is laid out across every state, every country, and that's kind of where it sits.

Based on where you live, really based on your ROI and how your utility connection is made.

Okay.

And so in areas where the trade off with the power company is less favorable, um I guess you guys don't necessarily work in those markets, but is it more common to see people

utilizing batteries to go almost entirely off grid in those markets?

Is there still a payout if you just forego the grid altogether and do your own power with batteries and solar?

Yeah, it's dependent on the utility cost, right, rate to the rate payer.

But like California is kind of the leading example.

Obviously California cost of energy is high.

But there's no incentive to be off grid.

Off grid is like you pull the meter out, you're never touching the grid's electric again.

That's not what anybody should do.

You always want to at least be connected to the grid, but yes, you have to add batteries to basically site store the energy that you produce so that you can use it at a different

time.

And then of course, if you run out of juice out of the battery, you can still buy it.

It's usually at night when power is at the least cost.

And then you're resuming.

you know, the next day you're picking back up with your solar.

So it can be done.

It is done every day.

It's obviously more, a little bit more expensive because you have extra equipment, but we are headed towards, you know, battery technology again has gotten to be so much more

reliable than you used to.

per KWH has come down.

We're heading into solid state technology.

So batteries that are, they really have very little electrolyte.

They have high, high energy densities for storage, and they're going to be produced at a much lower cost.

And one of those, is anybody can check this out on Wall Street Journal or any publication, but we have a sodium ion-based battery that's hitting the market in the EV industry, and

it's being made in China.

But those batteries, the energy density and the cost to produce those, it's in the neighborhood of about 100 times less expensive to produce than our current cell chemistry

today.

So we're entering this period where, again, I'm telling you, every six months, you know, there's something new coming out or to change.

It hits before people know it.

But their BYD is the auto manufacturer, the

The battery is made by CATL, which is the largest battery manufacturer in the world.

They're now charging those batteries.

You can charge an EV with that battery up to 80 % in about four to five minutes.

So about the same time it takes to fill up your car with gasoline or diesel, they're now able to do that with EV charging.

The issue is power delivery, of course.

It takes an immense amount of power to deliver that.

But my point is that we in the next, I think, five years, it'll be, we'll be at a point where you do not have to interconnect with the utility if you chose not to.

You'll be able to provide that power reliably for a long time at the same cost or potentially even lower as that technology advances.

So that's why, like, again, as we look at the industry,

Yeah, this is a little rough patch with the incentive change and stuff like that, but we're still headed towards energy independence.

So I think you're going to run into utilities instead of providing a lot of energy to all the homes that they interchange with.

You're probably going to pay more for just being connected and interchanging with your neighbor, right?

I think some of that will change.

Huh, interesting.

Yeah, that's really interesting.

And do you guys in your business, do you combine like solar and wind?

And I know there's some small residential sized windmills and that kind of thing out there.

Do you ever incorporate those or do you do strictly solar?

We're pretty much strictly solar.

I mean, wind's not a bad option, especially if you have it, right?

It's a little harder to rely on because you don't know, know, seasonality, yes, there is some of that, but like if you're in a high wind area, absolutely you could have, you know,

you could have a wind-based energy, you know, generator.

It's a little harder to interconnect with on the equipment side because it...

There's not really anybody making reliable wind equipment in the US for a consumer grade product.

So you're buying a lot of foreign Chinese product and it's a little harder to get reliable AC voltage out of those.

Yeah, we don't really get into that

too much.

at the small consumer level or even the small to medium manufacturing level as well.

Right.

Like we're if you're talking utility scale, wind farm, those types of things, like obviously that's out there.

That's been talked about a lot.

But at the back at the root, you know, where we're at, it's not as prevalent.

Yeah, interesting.

Yeah, I live on top of a hill above a lake in Wyoming.

So certain months out of the year, 50 mile an hour winds, that's just Tuesday.

So yeah, for a part of the year anyway.

So all right.

Well, we talked a lot about solar in general and your guys' background.

Let's dive into your business a little bit.

What has been the most difficult step so far building your business?

Do you got one in mind?

I got one in mind.

Yeah.

So I think at an earlier stage, the most difficult step was structuring the company in a way that had to be based off the numbers.

Like I said at the beginning,

when you're starting a company, you're hands on, you're in it all the time, you're usually producing the final product for most people, right?

Like as small business owners, that's what you do.

And so it's very easy to say, hey, I've produced 10 widgets and they've made us money and I have a little bit of a margin on each one and we move on from there.

But there's so much more to projecting and where you need to be at and where you see the company at.

And so when we started to put that in alignment,

you know, year four, year five of the company, we had to take the step to say, we need to get someone in who we can work with on a daily or weekly basis, help us align the

financials better, educate us further on what we should be looking at from a financial standpoint, a healthy financials on the business.

And so that process, it really took like a year and a half for us to be locked into the right thing.

have the right pieces in place with the right people and understand our business health from a financial standpoint.

And then once we were able to have that and we were able to relay that to our team as we put in, you know, goals and growth strategy and what areas do we need to focus, I think

that became a lot smoother for the company and it was not as...

strenuous on Alex and I as the owner.

Kind of, hey, we had a good month and then we had a bad month or we had a seasonality change, right?

It's really great in the summertime and then it sucks when it comes to wintertime, right?

Like if you know that there's some seasonality to your business, one, you can do things to try to offset that seasonality.

You can diversify your offerings as a company, but at the same time, we can plan for that and make sure that we are being smart with the way that we handle our cashflow and those

types of things to

sustain the business during maybe where we see some slower sale seasons and those types of things.

So I think that was probably the biggest hurdle that we faced initially.

But now that we're kind of over it and we have a really good system in place as to how we review those financials and what we work off of, it's been a real uh blessing.

I think so, as you mentioned earlier that, you know, lot of roofing companies are going to kind of outside install resources.

You know, our industry, because of what we do, it's a lot more technical.

There are companies, especially national players, that do the outstretched, know, outstretched install uh kind of arm.

What we've run into with that is like, there's so much liability in the product.

so, know, punching holes in somebody's roof, high voltage DC, electricity, failed components, system downtime, if you will.

What we actually have done with that, and I'll get to my point here in a little bit, we developed a service division that literally just takes care of people that...

fall on their faces or can't get reliable service or the equipment was installed incorrectly.

So we're kind of capitalizing that on the back end, but we believe in the product so much that we want to make sure that it is done reliably.

It's done the same way every time.

So that when we say, you know, this is a 25 plus year system, we truly believe it'll last 25 years plus.

And I have, we have systems from 10 years ago that are how many years, you know, right along that don't have any issues.

So.

ah I think we've learned that efficiency of people and processes is what makes us better than somebody that's grown at 300 % a year.

When you're in high growth, every year, all year long, your business becomes focused on growing.

And when the market corrects or there's changes like tax credits,

you don't know how to run just a normal day-to-day stable business.

Your business is set up to grow at 300%.

And so for us, again, we've done stable growth the last 10 years.

Part of that that we've developed, again, is optimizing each position in the company so that if I'm a salesperson, let's say,

salespeople and other companies, they will be knocking doors, they'll be closing deals, they'll be doing their proposals, they're scheduling their site audits, they're signing

their contracts.

They do a lot of things that may not be really what's maximizing their skill.

And so for us, we've tried to hone in on each position and each stage of our workflow.

having as much uh automation and optimization as possible.

And so that has been a big challenge.

been multiple years of going through iterations of changes and tweaks.

We're still in the middle of evolving in our software stack.

That honestly has probably been the second largest.

difficulty is getting software to work the way that you need it reliably because we rely on that so heavily to make us efficient.

you know, evolution of the company, evolution of the market, like it's one of the things that we continue to invest uh a lot of time and resources in because if I can have one

less employee or arguably do one more.

know, volume worth of employee without that employee, if you want to look at it on a class is half full.

Then I have to, we have to continue to optimize, you know, our backend systems and the way that we operate internally.

And so that's, that to me has been, it's been one of the biggest feats and like,

You want to focus on other things because they're easier, but the reality is like that project will probably never completely go away.

But it's probably one of the most valuable things that we can do as a business to stay relevant and stay profitable.

The business isn't profitable, it doesn't help anyone.

I think a lot of people get this misconception that the business owners are driving around in a Ferrari and they just have everything.

Every dollar that's made goes back to the owner.

I think it's easy to get that perception, but in reality, it's just not the case.

We have to run a profitable business to allow

our employees to have better quality of life, better quality of work, right?

And so, yeah, everyone here seems to understand that, you know, and we want a team atmosphere.

I think we probably share a lot more than what a lot of other companies do when it comes to where we sit from a financial position in the company, just to give that transparency

to our employees and to our customers on where we're trying to go.

It's a key core value to our company is transparency.

so Alex and I try to make sure we're living by that as we operate and run the business.

So our executive team.

They know those metrics.

They know where we're sitting right now.

They know why, if this month was not profitable, the importance of why the next month has to be, right?

And uh because we have to be able to do more with less physical resources and AKA, know, labor is the most expensive part of any business.

But then that means that we can continue to breed better quality.

uh of life for our employees as well as develop better quality employees, right?

Like they do more specialized in what they do and whether they end up staying with us for a long time or they move on to something else, they can get the best experience for them

as an employee working for us so that they're kind of hyper-focused in their quality of work.

So that's, I don't know, I think that's really important for people to understand.

yeah, you nailed a couple things there that you articulated well that have been big things for me.

know I used to chat with my employees regularly that we live in a low bid, low cost industry.

If you want to make more money than other people in other companies, the way we do that is by being more efficient than those other companies.

In order to pay more than everybody else pays, we have to get more work done than everybody else gets done.

yeah, becoming skilled at your craft.

becoming efficient, focusing on that is a big way to do that.

And yeah, I like that.

The companies exist to make a profit.

And, you know, that, that sounds a little harsh or a little callous, but without profit, they don't create jobs without profit.

They don't serve customers without profit.

don't innovate industries.

And so, you know,

like that is the core of everything they do.

And there's so much positive that comes from a healthy, profitable business that does provide jobs and a good standard of living and can provide benefits and take care of their

employees and has money for research and development and innovation in their field and can get out and serve their customers well and provide good services.

That all comes from a healthy financial

foundation a company that's bankrupt or going out of business you don't get any of that so yeah I appreciate that that was a great way to articulate all of it

When were you most afraid as a leader?

We're never afraid.

What are you talking about?

do mean?

Ha ha ha ha!

I, know, it's funny.

Uh, I, I was actually talking to my wife about this the other night.

We had some, um, some friends over and, know, this, this perception of owning a business, especially to somebody that's not in, you know, an entrepreneur has owned a business

before.

It's like, man, you know, all the liability and the stress and like, how do you, how do you live, you know, a normal life?

And it's like,

You just learn that most of your problems will resolve themselves.

Now, not without effort, of course, but you have successes and those problems will go away with time.

And you can rely on those past successes to dictate your future successes.

And so I think for me,

You know, the things that I would stress out about, I mean, I remember the first time I got a letter from an attorney or we got a letter from an attorney for something

ridiculous, right?

And I'm like, my gosh, you know, we're getting sued for a thousand dollars.

Like this is, this is bad.

And, um, you know, we, you have successes in those trials and then you build upon those successes.

so.

You know, there's not really a need or maybe even a, um, you know, I don't feel like I, I shoved the fears down deep and, box them up and kind of forget about them, but there's not

a need to, to worry about, you know, the things that are kind of outside of your control because time is dictated that we're going to be successful.

Um, and I think because, you know, again, Brian and I are

willing to look at, you know, innovation and change and we're in a very heavily, you know, they call it the solar coaster because there's so many things changing all the time.

We stomach that, but we also, get ahead of it.

We think all the time about what's next, what can we do, what's coming, what's changing.

And so staying on our feet and being aware has made us, you know, we've been able to ride through all the challenges, the dips.

And come out on top and I you know, grew up in in the sheet metal industry like I worked for my dad for I mean all through high school and You know, there's challenges in every

business but man solar is is just there's so much that changes all the time That we've had to become like if there's one skill.

I've developed.

It's the ability to to change to

to redirect the business if we need to and to make tweaks along the way to keep us relevant.

so honestly, think that's, you know, owning a business or a roofing company, you probably understand, or anybody listening, that's a skill.

It can be a fear, but that's a skill that if you can overcome, like, you're unstoppable in that case.

Yeah, adaptability is huge.

a core value of our company as well.

yeah, I'd say, I don't remember who said it, but it's really about just getting comfortable being uncomfortable.

That's where Alex and I live at now.

When people ask, how do you do it?

there's so much pressures.

You've got 40, 50 employees.

You have all this stuff that's going on all the time.

You just learn to be comfortable in it and understand like Alex said you live off off of the successes, right?

You're gonna have some failures You're gonna have some things that gonna happen But you're gonna overcome them and you're gonna learn and you're gonna move on and try not to repeat

as long as you're not repeating the same mistake over and over again You're good, right?

If it's a new mistake, that's fine.

That's part of growing and learning every single business.

I listen to a podcast with Jensen

I forget his last name from Nvidia, right?

Like he's the founder of Nvidia.

That dude, dang near bankrupted that company 10 times, you know?

And it was, uh but then now it's massive.

It's a huge innovator in the world, right?

So there's not going to be failures in your business.

And I think just accepting the fact that there is a way to fail forward and just trying not to repeat the same mistakes, I think that's really, important.

Alex and I both came from, grew up playing sports and had an athletic background.

We liked to hire ex-athletes.

Those are the type of mentality I think that really goes a long way in business to understand that as long as we're failing forward, we're in a good spot.

and can learn from those and turn them into successes.

So I'm in complete agreeance there with Alex on that.

man, that's a great perspective and there were times leading my business that I felt that way that man, we haven't failed yet.

This is just the next problem.

I was not able to maintain that mindset all the time.

There was always a bigger problem and the next problem that we had never faced before.

So um good for you guys.

think, yeah, thinking back now, if I could maintain that attitude more frequently.

Life would be a lot smoother a lot better and more enjoyable.

So

Is there something that significantly delayed the growth of your business that you would do differently?

You know, it's funny.

We're kind of at this point.

I will give specifics, but we did around 20, 23 million last year in total revenue.

It was between Oregon and Washington.

So our company is not big by any means, but I would say we're not small anymore.

What we really haven't like where we want to be is definitely different than where we are today.

And for this week, we were talking about, you we talked to our leadership team specifically about like, what do we want to do?

Are we good with just being at this size?

Do we want to maintain at this size?

what, what do you, cause our leadership team is, you know, there, it's a couple individuals in us and

You know, we look at them as part of the business and they make, they help us keep make key strategic decisions.

And I think, I think the consensus is like, Hey, the market's opening back up like competitions, falling big national players.

mean, if you follow any of the news about, you know, solar solar, the solar industry at all.

I mean, we're talking about.

hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollar a year companies built up to a billion.

mean, I think one of the biggest was almost a billion dollars in volume.

Gone, you know.

And so for us, we're like, well, hey, this is going to open the market back up and there's going to be less competition.

It's hard to operate solar in general.

So like, it's good to see these companies that were doing it shitty ways for the last 20 years.

Like they needed to go.

They were not

serving the customer well.

And I think, you know, we are now in this period of like, can grow, we could do 40 million, we could do 50 million.

There's some things that we're going to have to change to get there.

But I think honestly, that's been one of the most difficult as of late challenges is like knowing how to hit that next, you know, that next step.

I feel like we're at the bottom.

You know, the bottom of the next step and we keep just running into that, you know, that riser board and that big leap that we want to take.

I know it's going to require some changes.

It's going to be uncomfortable for all of us, but we see the opportunity.

We see the industry.

Like I said, the technology, the battery storage, like there are so many things coming down the line that if we can continue to evolve and do it the right way that

we can prove to ourselves and maybe potential investment partners down the road, it can be done.

We can be healthy.

We can make profit and we don't have to be teeter tottering constantly on verge of bankruptcy.

I that's what the industry is going through right now.

So yeah, I think that's right now, like the last couple of years, that's been our focus and it's...

It's just hard to hit the go button sometimes, I think, and actually make it happen because you kind of hold on to like, hey, this is always the way we've done things or we

don't want to take this risk.

And I think that we're at that point where we've got that next big leap in our future.

Yeah, I'd agree.

We're at the size where the next step is a step where a lot of people, a lot of resources that we know, other business entrepreneurs and owners, we're kind of moving beyond where

their knowledge base is, right?

And we're moving to a different category, a different volume level that requires significant amount of change.

So how we tackle that is really going to

really project the success that we can have here in the next three, four years.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, I'll be excited to get an update here in a few years and see how you guys have overcome that and where you're at.

It sounds like you're just growing like crazy and on a great track.

Is there a lesson that you wish you would have learned earlier?

I'm probably going to beat a dead horse here, but from the beginning, it's about mind your financials.

That was the biggest one.

If you can start the business with a clear path of visibility on your financials and run your business off the financials, we always say this to employees and to people that we

talk with, right?

Alex and I feel one certain way as individuals and people.

But the business is its own person, right?

And the business has its own needs and it has its own wants.

And those sometimes don't align with what Alex and I feel personally, but we have to lead with what is the business need.

ah And so if that means the business can't afford to have two extra people, then those two extra people cannot be with the business, right?

If it means that we need to gear up to 10 more people, then we need to do that and make sure that we can handle the volume that comes through.

And so the only way to do that effectively is to know your financial position as a company.

um And so I would say that from an early on stage I get it the first year Maybe the first year or two it can be a whirlwind when you start a business and all you really care about

I just landed that big project that big project was $25,000 right like that was huge and we knocked that project out and that was awesome and we did $200,000 in business this year

and that was killer right but

you go back and look at it, well, I paid myself 50 grand of that, and then we did this, and I didn't really mind the materials on that job as well as I could have, and then by

the time you look at it, it's like, maybe I made 4%.

on 200,000, right?

Is that going to sustain my ability to say, feel like I want to hire two more people to help me get the next $200,000 of work?

Well, probably at 4%, that's not, right?

And so those are the things.

And you just make gut decisions those first couple of years.

And that's why we see that high attrition of businesses failing.

starting and failing, starting and failing in the first five years.

And I thoroughly believe it has to do with the lack of financial understanding of how the business needs to perform.

So that's my biggest learners.

Understand your business financials, your business is its own person and provide that own person with the needs.

As long as you live by that, you can sustain a healthy business moving in the right direction.

Yeah, mine, mine would be to honestly, it's to stay to stay humble, like Brian and I have done, I feel like well over the years, but I mean, there's guys that have done much better

than us.

And I think that sometimes you become too prideful in the way that you're doing things, the processes, the systems that you've come up with.

You become

stagnant to a point where you're not open to really looking at change.

And I think that having pride or at least not being open for change has bit us in the butt where if we had, you know, maybe listened to an employee who brought up a valid, you know,

valid case, like we tell people all the time, our employees are like, we have an open door.

If you want to knock on the door and come in.

and share a thought, if you want to tell me that I'm a terrible boss, like do it because I'm going to do the same with you.

And so if I'm, if I'm going to sit here and tell you, you're not performing well, it's really not fair that you don't get to do that back with me if it's, if it's valid.

so I think, you know, our, employees bleed green, you know, our, our logo screens just look great.

little context there.

oh

we are small biz.

There's still that kind of family atmosphere.

We're definitely like, well, you know, again, we're structured and people have responsibility positions, but it's being humble and willing to listen and make changes

because we don't always have the answers.

And what we're doing today may not work tomorrow.

There's a lot of things that we could have avoided if we had just made changes sooner.

or delayed, you know, again, progress of the business.

Those are the things that I wish I could go back and change time because maybe we'd be at 40 million, you know, this year.

But that's what you learn.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Well, thanks, guys.

Is there uh a viewpoint or an opinion that you once held strongly and you've changed your mind about throughout the process of starting and building your business?

Hmm, that's a tough one.

I used to think Brian was a bad poker player, but now we're going.

out quick.

I think...

I think that for me, it's probably...

I'm sorry, Erick, can you repeat that so I can understand a little better?

I don't want to say something that's stupid.

Is there an opinion or a viewpoint that you once held strongly and you've changed your mind about as you've started and built your business?

So maybe a way that you looked at something or just an opinion that you had that throughout your experience you're like, man, no, I was wrong about that.

Yeah, I

think it's, can do it myself.

That's the answer, in my opinion.

For years, and still in a lot of facets of my life, I think that, well, I'm just gonna do it myself, right?

And take care of it.

And I think that mentality is one that is needed in a lot of positions in business, but at the same time,

As you grow and as we develop as a company, it is not sustainable to be the I'm gonna do it myself guy.

Because you have resources at your disposal that you need to help lean on.

It hurts your team if you're an I'm a do it myself guy.

It doesn't allow them to grow in their positions.

It's really important as leaders that we're always trying to find a way to remove ourselves, work ourselves out of a position.

Right?

If I'm actively involved in a specific piece of the operations department, as well as trying to lead the operations team, I need to find a way to make sure that I can either

train someone and put someone in place to do that role that I'm doing inside of the operations department, or create a new role and put someone in place to do that so that I

can do a better job of leading the operations department.

And so.

I think that would be the biggest one.

uh I think when you're young and scrappy and you're new as a business, I can do it myself is a great attitude.

I think as you begin to mature, you have to understand where that line is drawn and where you need to rely on your resources, your connections, your employees, your subcontractors

to build a quality setup for you and your business.

Yeah, would probably honestly, that was the same thing that came to my mind is I have very much the same like small business entrepreneur.

It's really easy to get.

I mean, there's you see it all the time.

You see businesses and owners that are that are doers and they can be successful.

You they can be they can be wildly successful.

I think that, you know, when when we set out to do this, we didn't know.

oh

We didn't really know how big this was going to get and what the industry was going to do.

And so it was that evolution of it's time for me to give up things because I'm a roadblock, not a conduit.

And I see that all the time, unfortunately.

I wanted to do all the IT for the business.

I wanted to develop our software.

I wanted to be IT support.

I wanted to, you know, I wanted to know the product in and out.

And there was a point, you know, just it was a few years ago that somebody came up to me, one of our managers was like, I can do this better than you.

And I know that's hard to hear.

I can do this better than you.

need to focus on other things.

And I was like, you're right.

It's inevitable.

So.

I'm glad that those conversations have been had.

I'm glad that again our employees are willing to come up and you know talk to us about that because they're looking out for the business.

It'd be just as easy for somebody to say well I'm gonna let that you know guy that sits up there make mistakes.

I don't really care.

I'm collecting paycheck like we don't have any of that here.

Everybody here is you know they're on the right seat and they're on the right bus and uh

And it's really important that you build your business around that.

So that'd be mine as well.

Okay.

Man, you guys are full of great advice.

Ha ha.

If you could go back and start all over, would you choose to do so?

Would you do it again?

Oh yeah, and a heartbeat, for sure.

I don't know if I could ever, I don't know if I could ever work for someone again.

so whatever that looked like, I think Alex probably feels fairly similar.

We have no problem, you know, working together with people, but having the flexibility to do what we want to do inside of our industry, inside of our business.

I think that's really,

It's probably a key attribute to everyone who is an entrepreneur, right?

It doesn't mean it's easy and there's a lot of failure involved, but I would do it in a heartbeat.

uh I think we would do it differently for sure.

And we could see more successes earlier and less roadblocks.

But yeah, a hundred percent, think Alex and I would do it over again.

mean, we gave up doing other businesses that we thought that we loved to focus on one that was more of a long shot.

because we were willing to see the value add to an industry as well as a value add to each other as business partners.

Yeah, I'd be the same.

think the non complacency, if that's even a word of this career of this industry has developed a lot of extra skill that I don't think I would have gotten maybe in another

industry.

I feel like the things that we've learned in this, whether we're here for another 10 years or

you know, whatever that looks like, we have some goals, we have some plans, but I know that I could sit down.

I probably wouldn't start a business again.

I think I'm kind of like that first four years, like I know it can be done, but like it's time to buy a company, right?

Like that's really what my next, you know, if we're not here at some point, that would be my next thing.

The skillset that we've developed, and then going back to that attitude of like,

problems or not, we're going to be successful.

I truly think that we've developed these skills that can be applied to other industries and I know I would be successful in those.

So yeah, the learned skills that I think we got out of being in a stressful environment has made for better business owners and future business owners of other things.

Yeah.

I think you're like the third or fourth person I've talked to just in the last couple of weeks that was a startup entrepreneur and said, yeah, if I had to do it again, I'd buy a

business instead of starting from scratch.

oh

or it takes a lot of money to rapidly expand a business.

And so I think, you you're going to pay for it one way or another.

At this point, like my kids and my family time are more important to me than sleeping on the floor of the office for, you know, for sales.

Like it just doesn't work.

So I think that's probably why.

I think that's uh probably the case for every one of those people I've talked to is when they were young and had no money and had the time, they went through the grind and the

startup.

And, you know, I think they're probably happy with the decision they made, but if they're going to do it again, they're just not willing to put that in again.

different, different phase of life.

What has been your biggest win as a leader?

What are you most proud of?

You know, I don't know if this is the only one, but it's being able to see, I guess, our employees reach new heights and new potential.

Again, like you bring people in.

They're in this too with you and they're developing their own skill sets and advancing and changing and evolving their career.

It's rewarding to watch certain individuals kind of, they come here, they're 18 years old, 19 years old, they have no career, they started out in the warehouse, they started as a

field, a laborer, or maybe somebody in the office and being able to see them.

you know, advance their skill set to find new skills that like they're actually really good at that they didn't know about and then sit down with them and be like, you have

something here.

And if you want to pursue this, like I'm here to support you and maybe put you in a new role.

But like this, you could go somewhere with this long-term, this is a skill that you have and you need to develop.

I think being able to see that.

has been really rewarding as a business owner.

Yeah, I agree.

It has to do with the ability for the people that we work with to grow and kind of come into their own, into their roles.

It's kind of like a parent, right?

You get to see your kids grow up and you get proud of them for making their goals and getting the A's on the report card and stuff like that.

I think that's the most rewarding as well.

We've seen several people just hit those.

hit those strides and come into their own as leaders.

I think it's probably even more so for people who are stepping out of maybe a physical role that...

has them maybe working with one or two people and they have tasks that they're doing every day, right?

I'm thinking more field type of position here, or even someone who's just specializing in doing permitting applications, right, from an office standpoint.

And then those people elevating themselves into roles that eventually lead to leadership roles where now you're in charge of other people, right?

And those skills that you learned are able to be passed down and you're able to now

get kind of boned up on your ability to lead those people and show them the right way to go about it.

I have a couple people in mind inside of our company that I think have had a fantastic job of transitioning from a kind of a solo minded worker into a real leadership role and

earning the trust of their employees and the people that report to them.

And because of that, we've been successful because of those people.

That's great.

love it.

Almost everybody I asked that question to, they don't talk about their career, their money, their name, anything like that.

They talk about their people and that's great.

What has been your best resource to grow as a leader?

I would say for me, it's going to be coaching, coaching experience, and not in the traditional sense of business.

Athletics is a huge part of my life.

I played football from the time I was in fourth grade till I was 21.

And I had every different type of coach out there.

position coaches, head coaches, et cetera.

I got to see the way people interacted and worked together and then also how they reacted and worked with their players.

And I don't know if there's a more fitting parallel in leadership than sports and coaching as it is to business and employees and developing.

Developing people developing character traits developing humans, right?

Like as much as people want to say that they're their own person It's their responsibility to grow as as an individual and self-educate like let's face it Everyone is influenced by

the surroundings that are around them.

And so if you have good people good leaders good coaches you will increase your

abilities as not just an employee or as an athlete, you're going to increase yourself as a human being.

And so I had a lot of coaches that said they cared more about coaching great men than coaching great players.

And I feel the same way with the people that we have employed with us.

And I think that stuck with me.

That's phenomenal.

I might steal that.

That's a good line.

Yeah,

might just be partnering with the right professionals in various aspects of your business.

So I feel like we've been pretty relentless on trying to find, you know, good legal partner, good contract CFO, some of the, you know, tax professionals like.

Again, it kind of goes back to like the concept of, you you try to do it all yourself.

Sometimes you got to get out of your own way and you need to find somebody that can truly provide that value.

I think we've been able to make a lot of strategic decisions and kind of back those up and validate them with, you know, uh

Partners that are crafts, expert craftsmen of their own trade, again, whatever that is.

So it's difficult, I think, to network sometimes as a business owner, like put yourself out there and make that a thing.

But it's so important to have somebody you can go to for those types of situations where you're just not the expert in that material.

Yeah.

Great.

Well, I know you guys have been through a lot of ups and downs.

We've talked a lot about the changing industry and the solar coaster.

I like that.

What is it that motivates you to keep pushing when things get really hard?

Well, there's the fear aspect, right?

Like there's a lot on the line all the time.

You've got your own mouths to feed.

You have 50, 60 employees that you're, again, responsible for.

I think it's at its core.

It's just that I really, just don't, I think people let their businesses go when they fail.

do.

I don't think if you look at every industry that's out there, there's not many situations where you couldn't figure out a way to come on top.

It may be hard, may be difficult, but it can be done, or at least that's the belief that I have.

And so for me, this, you know, was the same thing as a little kid.

Like, I did not fail.

I tried, you know, everything I could do to not fail was ingrained in me.

And so I think it's that feeling of when it's tough or there's challenges, I don't let myself fear anymore.

I immediately move to how are we going to get through this?

Let's make a plan.

Let's make things happen.

And it's because of that where you're not sulking.

And you become depressed or you become like a deer in a headlights look.

No, you divert that energy and you put it into how do I get through this?

that skill, I think is what makes businesses successful even through difficult times.

look at Rockefellers.

mean, if you go back and look at these companies that have been around forever and business tycoons.

They didn't go back and take a month off and just be depressed because things aren't going well.

They rounded the troops, rallied the troops, and they figured out how they're going to get through it.

There's a lot of good books out there, biographies on people.

You read Shoe Dog, you know, about Phil Knight and Nike.

Polarizing Character, one way, however you want to look at them, read the Elon Musk biography book.

I read Rockefeller, about John D.

Rockefeller.

And all three, there's just no, there's no quit.

There's no...

hey, that's okay.

Like there was failures for sure.

And every single time they took companies on the edge of bankruptcy.

But what they didn't do is just sit back on their hands and say that, shoot well, it's over, right?

Like no one ever did that.

And no one that's successful ever does that.

And so for me, I think that the motivator is that.

I don't think it's ingrained in my DNA just being the competition level that I have in me.

to wanna just fail by giving up, right?

I could not do that.

If I'm gonna fail, I'm gonna fail going out on my sword, right?

Like that's the reality of the situation.

And so I think that mentality is aligned with Alex and I and that's why we will pick up the phone at two in the morning or we will drive ourselves six hours away on a whim.

because they have some problem that just can't be seen to be solved out in the field, even though we haven't touched the field work in three years, right?

Like those are things, you know, hey, so-and-so called in sick, we had everyone get sick all of a sudden.

Okay, Alex and I throwing tool bags on.

and going and doing something.

Those are the things that motivate us and want to keep us going.

think that our families, providing for our families is huge.

think we both hold that as a really key value as men and as husbands is to provide.

I think that's ingrained in our DNA as men.

And so that's really important.

And then we feel the same way towards the people that we bring along with us.

I don't want to offer an opportunity to 50 people that's doomed for failure, right?

Like I want to add that opportunity that says, you can improve your life.

You can grow with us.

You can be the next operations director.

You can be the next CFO of our company if you have the desire and the ability to overcome the adversity and push through.

I think that's that's kind of what it is summed up for me as well

Okay.

Well, thanks guys.

Yeah, I think you guys again articulated well something that I don't know if it's learned or you have to be born with it or it's just situational but every great entrepreneur,

every great leader kind of has this attitude of I'm going to win or die trying.

There just is no give up.

You have to stick with it.

Was there a significant turning point in your business?

I know you guys had a rough startup.

You talked a little bit about those first four years being a really, really tough grind.

Was there a point where you were like, OK, we made it.

This is really going to happen, or we're a little bit more comfortable now, or you could see the future a little more clearly.

Was there a significant point where you really felt like you had kind of

maybe not made it but stepped up to a comfortable level.

I mean, I don't know if there's a specific point in time where that happened.

I feel like our business is in the maturity phase, right?

I mean, there's growth potential.

And again, we've set our sights on that.

But I feel like we're stable.

And that last like five years, it's just been kind of a.

We're not dying.

We don't have to worry about that.

We've got some key people in place.

The systems are working.

So yeah, I would say the last five years have kind of been more comfortable, if that makes sense.

And then again, I think.

It's not just solar that we do at this level.

It's growing a company.

It's inventing new ways to improve and drive down costs.

so the physical work is done day to day by other people.

And so now we get to just focus on using our brains more to continue driving the company forward.

And I think

I think that's like, don't know.

know I have several friends that are small business.

They wear all the hats like they're out there out doing estimates and trying to sell and, you know, run the business, do payroll.

I feel like we're beyond that finally.

And, and we get to focus on bigger, bigger picture stuff.

And obviously there's problems and things that come up and we have to get involved in, but, like, yeah, was about probably five years ago that we really turned the corner.

Okay.

No further ad.

hear it.

Okay, that's great.

Well, this is my favorite question I ask everybody.

Do you guys follow a particular faith tradition?

And if so, how has that impacted your partnership, your business, your leadership?

Yeah, we're both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the LDS Church.

So probably not the perfect example of what somebody would be, but I think I do think that it keeps us grounded.

I think that, you know, success sometimes can breed, again, pride and

So I think keeping us grounded, have common mutual beliefs, the way, know, we're both honest, you know, transparency, as Brian mentioned, is in our core values as our company.

Where in an industry like that's not known for being transparent, like it's, there's a conflict, you know, we could be dishonest and probably make a lot more money, but that's

not how we run our business.

And in fact, if anything,

we're just overly transparent because we want to be the opposite of that.

So I would say it drives our partnership.

I think a lot of the reasons why Brian and I work so well together and have been able to conflict, we conflict resolution, we do conflict resolution very often, but we put each

other at

the same levels are in the needs if that makes sense.

So it's not me, it's us.

If it's not gonna benefit us, can't do it.

I can't make that decision.

And I think honestly, that's where a lot of partnerships and failures occur is people become it's about me and me first.

And it's kind of same thing with God.

I can't put myself and my needs in front of what God wants us to do.

I can't do that with my family.

So I think having that as a core value is what what made us work well together.

Yeah, I completely agree.

We've experiences through life and where we have with our faith and our relationship with God.

I encourage everyone who's worked for us and we're open books about this type of stuff.

I wouldn't say that we're actively talking to people at work trying to get them to join a religion or anything like that.

But at the same time, when people ask questions about

us and about our lives and why we are the way we are, why we typically are always optimistic in the way that we approach things has to do with that.

It just has to do with our rooted cause, our rooted faith in uh Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for us and our ability to understand that there's more out there than just us as

an individual and that someone's always looking out for us.

I've had, I took a lot of pride

in our ability to help people that are coming to us in time of need.

And I say that through, we have a really unique opportunity that's out there in publications and stuff, newspapers about it, that we have a program that we've worked with

the Department of Corrections for a long time.

And they have an amazing apprenticeship program that's run by an individual named Jody Marlette over in Eastern Oregon.

And they have an electrical apprenticeship program, along with other trade programs that are there.

individuals who made mistakes in their lives, but then were able to get two year licenses while they're being incarcerated, travel around, perform maintenance and services on other

facilities for the DOC.

Those individuals getting an opportunity to come and work for us and then fully obtain a journeyman license.

I have six or seven.

uh guys who have come and gone or still with us that have been through those programs and have been able to now have a family, buy a home, move on from bad decisions that they made

in their past and really rehabilitate themselves into society and are key members of our company and key individuals and contributors to the communities that are around us.

And I don't think

The willingness to maybe take a risk on something like that is there without the understanding that forgiveness is real and that people deserve second chances.

that all kind of comes full circle as to our faith and why it kind of leads the way in what we do.

Alex and I can be difficult business guys as well, which maybe isn't always the most Christ-like, but we take a lot of pride in trying to lead by example and be in a good

position to provide for others.

Yeah.

Thank you guys.

I appreciate you being so open and honest with that.

So we've talked about it a little bit.

You guys have set some pretty lofty goals to continue to grow, but big picture long-term, what's next for Green Ridge Solar?

Where do you see the future of your company going?

Yeah, I mean, I think we kind of alluded to some of that, but we want to continue to grow market share volume.

There's a lot like there's some innovation that's going on behind the scenes, things that we're adding to make us more competitive by offering more kind of energy solutions and

less focused on just providing power.

And so I think as we continue to develop out those channels, our goal really is to become one of the top leading energy providers in the Northwest.

I don't know if we'd ever expand beyond Oregon, Washington, California, maybe one state over.

But I think that what we're developing as a business, both in reputation,

and solutions is, I would say cutting edge, but also it's a little unique and I think the market is mine.

so, again, I mentioned some of that before, solar itself is one thing, but there's a lot of ways to address energy costs and not many companies look at all the facets of that.

ah

And so, you it's kind of like you can put a bandaid on a wound, but if it's infected or whatever, like it's not going to resolve itself.

And so I think our industry needs to evolve a little bit to be looking at more than just slapping panels on and getting paid.

And so that's a big focus for, you know, again, part of our growth, but also just the evolution of the business.

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.

I wish more businesses took that viewpoint of, you know, not just executing to make money, but looking at where the industry is going as a whole and how they participate in it.

That's great.

So if I wanted a system installed here in Wyoming, you guys are not going to be the ones to chat with.

You're not interested in coming much further than Oregon and Washington.

might fly out and take care of you, but probably nobody else.

Okay.

Well, uh we do have a lot of listeners in uh Oregon and Washington.

If one of them is interested in chatting with you about their uh power needs or solar system, what's going to be the best way to get a hold of you?

ah Probably the easiest way is just to drop on to our website.

It's greenridgesolar.com.

And if you're a new visitor to that site, you'll be prompted to put some power bill information in.

That's probably the easiest way.

You can always call us um as well or email us at hello at greenridgesolar.com.

And our phone number is 503-395-1943.

Okay, well I will make sure we get all of that content in the show notes.

So if anybody wants to reach out to you, they can.

Do you guys have anybody that you'd like to see on the show, somebody running a really cool business or really cool industry, something that you'd like to learn more about?

Matt Risinger.

You know who Matt Risinger is, yeah?

really?

Okay.

Look up Matt Risinger.

Matt Risinger is a home builder.

He started in the Northwest, but now he's in Texas.

He's built a really big platform called Build, where he talks about construction and trades.

He's really big on home, like building healthy homes, building more efficient homes.

Um

air quality, building science, a ton on building science.

And I find it super interesting, especially if you have an audience that is more inclined to be on a little bit more of the blue collar side.

uh he's got a really big platform.

And so he would be very, very interesting to see on.

think he's a really unique guy.

I've heard him talk a few times at some conferences and met him years ago when I was building homes as well.

So I think that'd be a good lesson.

Awesome.

Well, I'll look into that now that you tell me a little more.

think I've seen some of his content, but I wasn't connecting the name right away.

So, yeah.

Yeah, that's great.

I'll see if I can get a hold of him.

That'd be fun.

Awesome.

Well, our last question to kind of wrap things up to either fuel or settle the debate.

If you guys have a job to do with a cordless tool, which brands do you prefer?

What do you think the answer is knowing?

Electrical related, Oregon, I'm guessing Milwaukee.

It's funny, all of our guys run Milwaukee tools.

Everything's Milwaukee.

Nobody's in Milwaukee.

But if you were to look in the back of my truck or at home, you would find, unfortunately, you'd find yellow.

So, you'd it all.

Both Alex and I, yep, that's the same for me.

It's kind of like once you start, you know, you're kind of stuck.

mean, you start buying tools and then you're buying batteries and then it's like.

in fact, you know, it's funny as those pack out boxes that Milwaukee makes.

love them.

Um, cause they're, they're, they're great, but I literally have my dual tools inside of, of red.

um I don't show anybody that.

uh

commitment to jump ship and make a change like you said you kind of get get stuck in a groove and I'm finding Yeah, yellow and red are the two big names.

Nobody said Harbor Freight yet and There there's certain trades in certain areas of the country where I pretty well know what the answer is gonna be so

exactly.

Yeah, if you're framing, there's a lot of Makita's in the framer, right?

Or, yeah, so that's, it's funny.

I just grew up with DeWalt.

My dad had DeWalt.

Like that's what we, that's what I, you know, that's what I through my apprentice on.

My two journeymen that I learned with all through coming up as an apprentice, they all, you know, used DeWalt.

So that's where it was.

Awesome awesome.

Well, thank you guys.

I really appreciate the time and the information I learned a lot today and I'm gonna have to dive in a little bit more and learn a little more about solar because I've learned that

maybe the education I had was not well-founded So I really appreciate you guys taking the time.

I appreciate your wisdom your insight and I wish you the best

Yes, you too.

Thanks, Erick.

Thanks for having us on.

Awesome.

And thank you guys for joining us here on From the Ground Up Show.

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