A few weeks ago, our CEO Jan Rippingale joined the Elite Growth Podcast to talk about what it really takes to build and sustain a solar software company — especially when the market turns upside down.
In a wide-ranging conversation, Jan shares how Blu Banyan went from serving the fastest-growing solar installers in the country… to navigating massive disruption as interest rates spiked and the industry pulled back. She dives into what changed in our messaging, what didn’t change in our mission, and how Blu Banyan is still focused on helping solar companies convert projects to cash — faster and with less chaos.
If you’ve ever wondered how to scale through uncertainty, lead with resilience, or find clarity in your value proposition, this is one to watch.
🎧 Full episode below, and the full transcript is available for reading right underneath.
Transcription
Ashur Elliot (00:00)
welcome to today’s episode. So we do have an exciting guest. For those that are just joining, we’re Elite Growth Partners and we specialize in helping companies scale using the theory of constraint. So for instance, a free growth consultation is comment growth in the DMs. So Jan, if you can start things off, just talk to me a little bit about what your company does and just some of the things that you’re responsible for on a day-to-day basis.
Jan Rippingale (00:22)
So Blue Banyan provides software for solar installers to run their businesses. So we service resi, commercial and development, utility scale solar installers to help them pull in their project management, accounting and everything onto one platform. So they’ve got a single source of truth, which is a dramatic improvement for their daily operational efficiency.
Ashur Elliot (00:48)
Awesome. what’s like, has the company evolved? So I mean, from when you first started the company, how long ago was that? If you don’t mind me asking.
Jan Rippingale (00:56)
2016.
Ashur Elliot (00:58)
Perfect.
So I find it since that date.
Jan Rippingale (01:02)
It has absolutely been a roller coaster. In solar, we call this the solar coaster. And the company has been on that same trajectory. So we started with ⁓ friends and connections that we knew and then gradually grew primarily from a service basis. And then we doubled down into the building a solar product to help people get all the benefits that we were seeing that you could get.
for solar companies running on NetSuite. And so we built that product and called it our Microvertical and went out to sell it. And we did really well between 2018 was when we launched SolarSuccess and we did great through 2022, 2023. We had five of the 10 largest residential solar installers on the SolarSuccess platform. We had significant
commercial and developers who are like the utility scale on the platform. And then the interest rates started going up and 85 % of residential solar is financed. And so the interest rates going up from like, you know, near zero to 6 % effectively doubled the price of residential solar. So no one’s happy with
the tax credits being removed and the solar, the cost of doing solar, residential solar, like doubled in 2022, which was a much bigger hit than the tax credit one way the other would have been.
Ashur Elliot (02:47)
So how have you just kind of managed that in the last like two or three years since it’s happened?
Jan Rippingale (02:53)
Well, so we did have like Q4 to Q1 from 23 to 24 had a 73 % drop. Like when it finally all hit, it had a 73 % drop market wide in the, across the country in business. And so we had two of the largest installers in the country went out of business within six months of each other, which were two of our largest clients. So it was really tough. The main thing
that we did was that we maintained grace. Like when you’re going through this, everybody else is going through it as well. And so there’s a lot of gnarliness that people will bring into the room that doesn’t have anything to do with what’s going on. And so we really held a lot of space and grace for ourselves and for our clients, our customers, our partners, everybody in the entire ecosystem.
And then we had to get real. We did a series of layoffs because we needed to, you know, cut our costs and it was painful. It was definitely painful. I don’t know if you remember or not, but in 2022, when things were going great before the interest rates kind of really kicked in, it was very hard to get people. You’d be super happy to get anyone with a pulse to get the job done.
This is very difficult to find people who are articulate and clear thinking and all the things that we want now. And now we can be pickier. So we did have some fluff that we needed to, that it has benefited us to consolidate and get some better processes and work through that better. Cause there was definitely some quality issues that had creeped in over that quick expansion.
We had to dig deeper than that. We had to actually make some hard calls about where we had very high quality people and there’s areas of the business that we’re not focusing on anymore. So we had to let them go. So there were two layers of reality checks as we managed through that. and one was kind of reflection and it felt like good, like you’re on a diet. The other is feeling a little bit more like, okay,
Ashur Elliot (05:00)
Mm.
Jan Rippingale (05:16)
Now we’re like a little starving and pulling nutrients from our bones. But you need to do that if you’re going to stay in the game. ⁓
Ashur Elliot (05:28)
No, 100%. So how would you find, how do you find you’ve had to adjust to then find new clients? So I’m assuming that it’s been a little bit of a different strategy from where it was when you started in 2019 versus where it was in 2022. So how were you able to make that adjustment?
Jan Rippingale (05:43)
So we were actually able to go into the market totally free and we had referrals and our business was entirely referral based and people were calling us through 2022. So since then the markets got much tighter. Everything we had to do was about helping your company scale. Our whole messaging was about helping you scale faster. And now our messaging is about stopping cash leaks and improving efficiency.
So we had to do a complete pivot on the message. It’s actually the same product. And so it’s been a healthy pivot for us to make. We did change some stuff about what we highlight in the demos and some other things. And then we’re trying, we were doing trade shows, right? And the other thing that happened in this is COVID happened, right? So we’re, and we’d really done great at trade shows and just talking to people and getting to know them. And once that wasn’t working as well, we’ve had to try to go digital.
So as we’ve gone digital to do our ads, we are getting many more leads in, they’re at a much less, I mean, they may or may not even be, they might be problem aware, much less solution aware or product aware. So we got all these referrals in that were all product aware people that kind of knew what we were offering and how it would work. And they just wanted to talk about how it would work for them. So we’ve had to go through and change our
our messaging to filter through people who are not problem aware, much less product aware. They kind of think that these hidden costs are the way that everything should go. And they didn’t know that they could get better. And so we’re really working people from that stage down to product aware and to the marketing aware. So doing this digitally has been a real adventure and we’re still in the middle of that adventure making that pivot.
Ashur Elliot (07:40)
So how long has it now been since you’ve just moved over to the digital side with running paid ads and things of that nature?
Jan Rippingale (07:47)
We really made our big leap into that in May. So it’s only been four or five months now.
Ashur Elliot (07:54)
Okay. And then what’s in terms of getting a return, like, is that something that you’re starting to see? Are you seeing progression in that or has it been pretty stagnant?
Jan Rippingale (08:04)
⁓ It’s still been pretty stagnant. ⁓ We’ve had some really interesting adventures. The biggest return so far has not been direct. The biggest return is that we could test message market fit in a way that you just can’t do. You’ve got your intuition from trade shows and talking to people, but you don’t actually have a succinct message that really works. So the first thing that’s been really great about the transition is that we
We convert projects to cash 40 % faster and it’s short, it’s concise, it’s understandable. Coming up with that message took a bunch of testing, but you can actually do that on digital ads. You can make your offer absolutely succinct. And while it hasn’t had a direct, we haven’t gotten the return that we want from the digital ads. We have changed our messaging. We’ve gotten more website traffic.
and the referrals that we’re getting in and the referrals that we’re asking for are much clearer because we have that clearer message. So it sounds funny. Yeah, the digital piece hasn’t by itself had an ROI yet, but the influence in the language of our team probably has had an ROI.
Ashur Elliot (09:25)
Okay. So what do you think the, I’m curious as to what the next steps are in terms of you starting to gain an ROI from the digital ads. Like what do you kind of think is missing currently in that process that can help you, of course hit that next milestone.
Jan Rippingale (09:43)
So the biggest learnings that we’ve really had have been around ⁓ where AI helps and where AI hurts. So one of the big things that AI will do is it will give you more ads, more leads like this. And so our lead list was targeted with Hispanic people because there are a lot of Hispanic people who are solar installers and doing great work and owning solar companies.
And, then it shifted to just Hispanic people, people who spoke Spanish. And so then we would get, you know, people who are sitting down on their couch every day and they’re Spanish speakers, which is not our target audience. So the AI like over-learned this one element and took us to completely other people ignoring our other criteria. So you have to be really careful about that and then restart your ads. If anything like that happens.
And so we’re really learning to give the feedback about this is or is not a good lead. Positive and negative feedback have to go back right away. It’s like in a nearly immediate feedback loop to Facebook. Otherwise they’ll over index on the people who will click the most rather than the people who are actually your leads. So that was super useful. The other real learning that we’ve had has been around bots. That if you identify or you get bots, got to…
shut that down and give those negative feedback right away. Because otherwise they’ll just, Facebook will send you hundreds of bots. So we have gotten the best results when our ads were fresh, like in the first couple of days of starting new ads and then the audience tracking has gone south and we hadn’t had time. So now we’re building another set of new ads and the feedback loops are upfront.
as fast as we can get it back to Facebook.
Ashur Elliot (11:42)
Okay, well that sounds good. That sounds really good. So how have you found outbound? Like has happened something that you’ve experimented with as well on top of the digital ads?
Jan Rippingale (11:51)
So we have, and we’ve got cold emails and some different email servers and different stuff set up. We’re having trouble, I think, breaking through the noise, because we’re using similar messaging in our cold ads as we got our impressions and we tested against, but we’re still getting very small response rates. So my suspicion is that we’re not actually getting very many eyeballs from what it is that we’re doing.
So absolutely interested if there’s more tips out there, but how we’re getting real eyeballs and how we would know that we’re hitting real eyeballs or not on the email side is something that we’re still experimenting with.
Ashur Elliot (12:37)
And then because the other thing I’m kind of curious about now to get your opinion on is, you know, is closing a referral versus holding somebody, you know, closing somebody that’s cold and that you reached out to. If you can just speak on just the differences in that, if any.
Jan Rippingale (12:57)
So we have, what we have done by, by working with people who were essentially strangers to us that we didn’t know that weren’t warm is that when they tell us what it is that they’re interested in or why they’re in the room and what they want to get, we are specifically listening for that and, and type out their first three things, their top three things that they want to know about. And we start off our first demo meeting by saying, did I get this right? And by
asking them, this is what I heard, did I get it right? We are getting a much better buy-in that we’re talking about the right things through the entire meeting. It’s a shorter meeting and they’re ready to move afterwards. It’s so much better process. And we’ve tried it out with our referrals and it works better than ever. So we have been, we have the process that we’re using for code leads requires more rigor because
You’re just talking to strangers and you haven’t established your credibility. But that rigor gives us a much better process for our referrals. So I am really happy with how what we what we’re learning from working with the people who are coming to us cold is just making us better for the people who are coming to us warm.
Ashur Elliot (14:14)
Awesome, awesome. That’s really good to hear. And then the other thing I was curious about is like, what’s next for you guys? Like if you have to look, let’s say like three to five years in the future, like what’s in store for you guys? are currently, there are new products and things like that that you’re working on to continue to grow and scale.
Jan Rippingale (14:34)
So our mission is to deploy more solar faster and to enable that deployment to get it out there. Right now, to help with climate change, the blocker is how much solar can actually be deployed, how quickly can it be deployed. So we are working on setting up the budgeting and the large capital management, particularly for the utility scale, since I think that’s where the two things, where the market’s moving and where we’re going to be able to deploy more of the solar.
So we’re doing these budgeting to get individual power plants and virtual power plants working because right now our grid is really constrained by one big source of energy sending out. And I think we’re going to be moving to have many sources, which distributed energy, feeding into the grid and back as the energy is available. ⁓ That’s called a virtual power plant instead of just a formal power plant.
And in order for it to work, you have to have batteries that you can charge and discharge, and you’ve got to have your solar panels working and you’ll be sunny in some areas and not in others. So you have to have all of that systems working together. So I think in three to five years, we’re going to have the infrastructure and the software that we need to make ordering electricity that you need something like ordering, you know, your Airbnb. And there’ll be people who optimize when they buy electricity and when they sell electricity.
and you can turn their home and the power generation of their home or their other properties into an asset that they feed into the grid strategically. I think we’re moving to this kind of more shared economy around energy in the next three to five years.
Ashur Elliot (16:21)
Do you think there’s anything that might disrupt that or get in the way of that happening? do you think it’s just inevitable? It’s just a matter of time.
Jan Rippingale (16:31)
⁓ The biggest things that could get in the way would be utilities. And utilities could say, no, you can’t use our transmission lines or no, you can’t do some of that kind of policy work. And I don’t think that they’re going to actually get in the way. I think the demand from the combination of AI data centers and electric vehicles is going to create such a demand for energy that the price
of energy is going to go up significantly in the next three to five years unless the utilities get creative and allow for this kind of experimentation and working things out, which by the way is working in Australia. People do this in Australia already. So we know it can be done. So I think there’s going to be so much pressure about high utility rates from homeowners and consumers that the utilities are going to be open.
to trying these new ways and moving to a new model.
Ashur Elliot (17:30)
Interesting. I like that a lot. like that a lot. It’s good that it’s, you can see that it’s already working. So it’s not like you’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. You’re just essentially optimizing and improving it, which I really like. Just the last topic I wanted to cover with you is just some client success stories. So I you’ve been in business now for a number of years now. Is there any specific client success story that you can share? You can obviously keep the company name anonymous, but if there’s anything you’re willing to share, be happy to hear it.
Jan Rippingale (17:55)
Yes. So I am super excited about how our clients are doing. Ethical Energy is one of our clients in Pennsylvania, ⁓ about an hour out of Philly. And they were able to do three times the number of projects with the same back office staff. And that enabled them to change their economy of scale so that they could move forward. And they are doing really well despite all of these changes that are happening in the solar market.
And it gave them the foundation they needed to continue to expand when other people were contracting. And I’m really excited about how that worked out for them. We have other clients who are doing large scale solar projects and they get endless delays about when you’re going to get the modules shipped in or not shipped in. And so they essentially had given up.
on having interim budgets that were anywhere near correct. And now they’re able to change how their budget’s going to move. there’s a delay, it’ll cascade that delay into their budget so that they can see when they’re going to get their cash. And the CFOs are like, I can sleep at night because they were, they were all, you know, if you order the money too soon, cause most of these projects are financed, you end up paying a lot of extra interest. But if you order it too late, you get penalties and
So being able to manage that is called treasury, but being able to manage their cash effectively has enabled them to sleep at night, which I am certain in the long-term is going to result in us deploying more solar.
Ashur Elliot (19:39)
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Do find that there’s, do you find that there’s maybe some misconceptions that some of your prospects have before they start working with you? And then let’s just like, if you can just talk a little bit about that, if there’s just, there’s some common misconceptions that you think you’ve noticed with prospects.
Jan Rippingale (19:57)
I do think that there’s some ideas that prospects have that they don’t need to participate. It’s a little bit like trying on clothes in the store. But when you’re running your business, it’s not the same as trying on clothes. You actually do want it tailored to your specific business. And that takes some time and attention ⁓ for what it is that you want and need in order to work in your market, in your state.
And so I do think that there’s some ideas that some owners have had where they just throw it over their shoulder instead of paying enough attention to make sure that the lines of the outfit hang correctly, that you would still need that your business is going to hang together correctly the way you need to. So there’s been some over delegation. then there’s, it’s…
you know, it’s absolutely recoverable, but it doesn’t work as well without the owner’s attention to make sure that they really are getting what they want to need out of the system. so it doesn’t take a huge amount of time and attention, but it really does pay off to keep your thumb on that, that system. It’s a little bit like the nervous system or the circulation system of your body. You really do want to make sure that
You’re not delegating that to somebody who doesn’t have the big picture view.
Ashur Elliot (21:27)
Of course, of course. And then the just the last thing I wanted to ask you is if you could go back in time to, when you first started this company, what would you do differently? If, if anything.
Jan Rippingale (21:38)
I would have done, so the message market testing wasn’t actually available when we started. But I would have done more of that sooner. I love having a clear, concise message about what we’re doing. So I would have nailed that with the idea of an offer. That if you follow our process, your projects will convert to cash 40 % faster. having a specific offer available and have that clarity.
I would have done that from the beginning. I feel a little bit like I had blinders on this entire time. I’ve been trying to run their business. so I would have spent more time on getting that right to begin with. I would have gone and tried to do digital work sooner because I love these feedback message mechanisms that we’re getting about how it resonates ⁓ with many people.
And yeah, those are the two big things. would have done what we’re doing now and what we started since May, almost from the start. And some of that’s idealistic because literally the tools were not available. But we could have done something much closer sooner. So I would have gotten that broad market feedback and volume much faster because I got it one by one, referral by referral.
instead of getting that broad market feedback.
Ashur Elliot (23:11)
That’s probably one of my favorite answers so far. Like we’ve done a lot of podcasts and I really liked that answer because I, you know, we see so much with companies that completely just overlook their offer and positioning. And there’s actually so many bottlenecks within the business that just come from how they’re presenting their offer and how they’re positioning themselves to the market and their.
their prospects. So it’s, it’s something that’s really, really overlooked. I’m, I was, yeah, I’m very impressed with that answer. That was, that was very good. I liked that a lot. And then listen, I really appreciate the time. You know, I’m, you know, I’m glad you’re generous with your time with coming on the podcast and transferring insights and just your journey so far.
