Scaling Solar Smarter: Our CEO Jan Rippingale on Standardization, Speed & Team Adoption

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode. Today we’re going to talk about growing a software company in a rather

low trust industry. Without any further ado, Jan, if you could introduce yourself and the company you represent

and we’ll start with that. Hello, I’m Jan Ripping. I’m the CEO of

Blu Banyan and we help solar installers to run their businesses. So, we have

software that runs the businesses while they’re solar installers. accounting, project management, field service, all

of the different elements that are required in the digital age to create

this infrastructure that is going to power our next season as a company, as a

culture and a country as we move through the energy revolution.

Why software company and why in the solar space and when did it all start?

The stories are related actually. I was going to be an astronaut and president when I was nine.

Okay. And um I was going to I was accepted into Naval Academy. I was going to be a

pilot to become an astronaut. So it actually was the path for you. Wow. Okay.

Yeah. I was very serious. I I worked at NASA. I did all all sorts of I mean

absolutely dedicated to do this. And I became clear when I was 17. I had to

acknowledge that I was going to be one inch short and there was nothing that

was going to change it for me to become a pilot and in either the Navy or the

Air Force. And so I um pivoted to the next best thing which

is to be a chemical engineer because chemical engineers have the highest chance of being mission specialists as

an astronaut. So I switched my degree and I pivoted into chemical engineering

and changed the school and and did all the pieces. And part of that involved

learning about solar. So that was long enough ago that all solar that wasn’t on

space was called terrestrial solar because the only actual applications of solar at the time were powering

satellites. So, I have been interested in solar since I was nine because that is how you powered satellites and

created ecosystems and all the science fiction around that. And it wasn’t until

it wasn’t until I decided to be a mission specialist and that I was still going to be president ended up talking with John Glenn

because he was one of the three people at the time who were engineers in Congress.

There were no other engineers in all of the United States Congress. Europe runs things completely differently. They have

an actual university. INSEAD was created to support this where you would get educated in order to be a politician. So

you’d have tech people with technical backgrounds and healthcare backgrounds and other backgrounds in order to do

their job as a politician. Whereas in the United States, it’s just whatever random person makes a lot of friends.

So one of the shortcomings of that is that we have people who have no training

making you know national policy about our technology and as an engineer I

wanted we had an internship and so I met the one of the three engineers. So we got to score a meeting with John Glenn

and I talked with him about being an astronaut and the latest funding project that NASA had going on which was to get

a mission to Mars at the time. This was pre-SP SpaceX. And he said that he

couldn’t support funding it. And I

stopped and I said, “Tell me more.” And he explained that the United States, in

his opinion, needed to focus on improving our education and put our public resources towards education, not

space or going to Mars. and he’s well aware of all of the spin-offs and all of

the benefits of science research and that was his value judgment about what

was important to the country and that was the moment I realized that I don’t have a job that there wasn’t going to be

enough astronauts in the space program for this to work out in any reasonable

way. So that’s when I pivoted into software and I did software. I went to Wall Street. I don’t do anything

halfass. So you probably need a I tell but I don’t do anything halfway. So So I

went to Wall Street and did all of this intense software at high volumes just

getting you know NASDAQ online and all sorts of really interesting things. Worked with the MetLife IPO which was

the largest IPO done in history by the number of users. It was really exciting

and fun and interesting and at some point in time I was just over it. I did

not want anything to do with software. I wanted to be in the real world. I wanted to actually add real value. And I went

back and studied in California in Hopland. They’ve got the solar living institute. And I went back and I was

going to be an electrician and install solar panels to change how we were going to move with the with the world. And I

did that for about two weeks. I got certified. I did my stuff. And it lasted for about two weeks in the field writing

on pads of paper trying to decipher my boss’s handwriting to figure out what

I’m supposed to do to make sure I don’t burn this house down.

And I was like, “Oh my god, we have to have software if we are going to deploy

enough solar to affect climate change.” So my life is a story of pivots that all

come down to we have to have better software in order to manage this energy

transition and deploy more solar faster. Wow. What what a story. I wasn’t expecting that kind of a story with so

many pivots and wow it’s quite extraordinary here. Wasn’t expecting

that. So now we landed at the software space solar. I understand the connection

here. What was essentially the the the next step? So you you were frustrated

with the boss couldn’t figure out because there’s so many out let’s call them outdated not even Google sheet or

or Excel sheets there was piece of paper type of management pen and paper type

type of management. So you were quite frankly frustrated with that there is better ways to do to operate operate a

business in in this century. What was the next step? So I actually connected

with my contacts and I got associated with DC power which was the largest

distributor of solar equipment at the time and I came in and I started fixing their systems and learning more about

what the solar systems and software were was. They had just recently implemented

Netswuite and while I was I was an Oracle VBA and so Netswuite is a super

easy version of Oracle. And so I I ended up helping them implement their

Netswuite system. And then I realized that this was a tool that had all of the

pieces that was simple enough for the solar installers to use but also robust

enough to actually hand the complex handle the complexity that they needed to navigate.

From that experience and integration, I ended up building Solar Success. I

struck out on my own and created Blu Banyan and started solar success as the product.

So Solar Success and Blu Banyan is the same company. Is it’s a sister company

or is it’s a product within the software? A Blu Banyan is the name of the company and a banyan tree has got

it’s a tree in Africa that’s got many and and all over the country actually

but it’s got many different pieces that will come down and create new ecosystems. So I wanted to start with

solar but I am still hoping that we might branch out into electric vehicles

and geothermal and other kinds of adjacent markets. So, Blu Banyan is

like the umbrella and then solar success was our first product. Interesting. Yes. I’m not I’m my my

brother is part of a big project. I’m almost got involved in that as well. We’ll see how that goes in in Africa

where there’ll be everything you just mentioned plus a bunch of other things needed. So maybe there was an

opportunity there to to to partner up because there’s he just landed two days

ago over there and it’s quite a journey to to travel through throughout some African countries and he’s it’s it’s

having fun so far. So we’ll we’ll keep you posted on that. But there it just immediately came to my mind with so many

branches there that will be needed for projects like that. So there’s I feel like because of that we’re still in an

infancy stages here with worldwide obviously maybe US is is a little bit more advanced. Australia is pretty

advanced in some areas but overall there’s still lots that can be done there. So that that’s really

interesting. Now I now I get a good understanding of of what it is. So how how did what was your go to market

strategy in the in the beginning? Were you just working with that particular project you mentioned where the boss

used pen of paper? Did you actually convince him to give it a try to some software or did he stay with the pen and

paper strategy that he was using? He ended up sticking with the pen and paper strategy until he retired. So he

wasn’t that far from retirement. Yeah, he stuck with his pen and paper to the end. He was not going to make it to the

other side. But he did introduce me and he was happy to have things work better because even the distribution company

working better helped him out. That was that never actually came full circle on that front.

But the our first go to market was really based on the network and we needed to confirm that we had product

market fit and so we just talked with people and tried it out and got more feedback about what our proposals were

and how it worked. our first product was overfit to to one specific company. So

we had to like back that out a little bit when we did the management and then gradually we got the results that we

wanted to see and we can actually for a residential solar installer they can

convert their projects to cash 40% faster. Yeah, it cuts off a dramatically

reduces the time frame that they need to get the projects completed which is when they get their full cash cycles coming

through. All right. Yes, it has made a substantial improvement.

At one point in time, the solar industry has gone through some mic market cycles, but at one point in time, we had five of

the top 10 solar installers in the United States were on solar success, which was onethird of the residential

solar market. Wow. I wish I came across your company when I was growing a

company here in Southern California. I was running all building and running all the all of our SOPs on kind of like that

boss that you had pen and paper, but I was running on Google Sheets type of wasn’t even Google sheet. I think it was

numbers because everyone was running on max. I built everything on numbers which

was not not that really interactive as Google Sheets to be honest. But internally I think was maybe even safer.

But yeah, I managed I I remember I had at one point just me and couple of crews

and couple offices 51 projects uh that I was managing and the thing was that the

sheets helped me. I was obviously helping me stay organized but I I still when I look back I still think like I

had all of the projects in my head. So I was at my maximum capacity if you know

so obviously for those who don’t know solar takes quite a few weeks to install some sometimes months sometimes even

years if it’s a commercial project so it’s not like I had to manage 51 projects every single day but I wanted

to be up to date obviously to make sure everything runs smoothly so it was obviously overwhelming but then when I

when I start handing off certain aspects of it the numbers sheets didn’t didn’t work as well so I can imagine that’s

what a lot of your clients res could resonate with as well. Exactly. Once once you’re doing 20 resi

projects a month, you need help. Or if you’re doing 12 four to 12 commercial

projects, depends on the size, you need help because there’s no way to manage that consistently across the team

separately. And so yeah, we started but literally we

were trying to teach people who were in interested enough how to scale their businesses and it’s a lot of soft

knowledge. There’s there is hard knowledge in how to run the electronics and there’s a lot of training associated

with that and we didn’t really work on that too much other than just make sure the training was available but there’s a

lot of soft knowledge that is required in the United States. In the United States, it takes 27 days

on average to submit a permit and then get the permit approved for a residential solar.

Just a permit. Just the permit. In Europe, it takes 60 minutes.

I know. Done some projects there, too.

Yeah, exactly. And so, so in Europe, you’re done with the project in a week. And in the United States, the average is

120 days, which is 4 months. So there’s there’s a whole bunch to reduce in the

time frame there. But we were able to get projects from submitted to approved in 72 in the authorities having

jurisdiction that use solar app. So we we worked on getting I also work on the

orange button department of energy’s orange button working group where we’re focused on data standards for the

industry and the world. By the way the UN has also agreed to adopt these standards. So we are working with

Australia and Africa everybody to get us all in the same data standards. We can

build what we need and communicate in the right way across the entire world.

And it’s really much safer because it once it’s standardized just like a plug in the wall, then everybody else can

build what they want to off of those basic standards and

we can roll out security protocols as standards that will make the entire

infrastructure much better. Right now each manufacturer has some version of making up their own approach and that’s

not entirely true. Sunspec and some other standards organizations have some cyber security and other security

protocols, but there’s a whole heck of a lot out there that is stuck together with

toothpicks and bubble gum. And we do need to standardize as an industry across the world in order to maintain

consistent security and best practices and all the things that come with standardization and simplification.

Sounds like perfect timing with what’s happening right now in the solar space. There is big big changes are almost like

I would say needed and I just had a conversation a previous guest with a company from Ireland and

they keep it so transparent that you can see the pricing of pre-built systems. Obviously, you will need some

adjustments, but it’s it’s pretty accurate for what most homes will need. A residential site for Yeah, they have a

pricing for energy, storage, solar, the whole installation from A to Z. Average time 21 days from start to finish, from

signing contract until I up and running. And uh yeah, super transparent. I have

not yet came across anything like that in the United States. So, and then al also the pricing was

three to four times averagely less than in the United States. And you might be

wondering, is that because they’re using cheap products? Is it because they’re using cheap energy storage

manufacturers, cheap inverters, or is there something else behind? Okay. So, so I do like to compare the

United States to Europe to get the kind of competitive juices going because we can do better, right? Americans can

figure out this and make it work. And it’s not entirely fair because the weather zones that the Europeans have to

deal with is is much many fewer and they’re generally easier to deal with

than we’ve got everything from the tropics and you know hurricanes to snow

loads and mountains to the desert and and there’s some of it

that’s just silly. We have 18,000 authorities having jurisdictions, AHJs,

that issue solar permits in the United States. 18,000 18,000. We have 50 states and we have

18,000 ASHJs. And if you look at the city of Houston,

it is so convoluted like it’ll go up one side of the street will be in the city of Houston and the other side of the

street will be Harris County that it’s very very difficult. It’s so

gerrymandered the city of Houston’s AHJ that the perimeter of the city of

Houston is larger than the perimeter of the state of Texas. It’s it is so much

more complicated than it needs to be and it’s a lot of work. What the Europeans did with the European Union

was standardize so many different things which is really not very glamorous. It’s

not glamorous work dayto-day. But Europe is is that is the benefit of doing that

is that they now know exactly what they mean when they say a PV module just like

they know exactly what they mean when they say banana. Right? By having that precisely defined and doing that

standardization work, they have simplified and created this environment that supports transparency which is also

going to give them an advantage with AI. Because when they have these AI

structures, when AI goes and looks at that word for the PV module and they know exactly what

that means for a residential system in Zurich versus in the United States, it can mean

something super different in the city of Houston than it does in Tucson, Arizona, or that it might mean in New York City.

And it’s going to be a disadvantage for Americans for a long time to come. the

standardization. See what you mean? And simplification is necessary. And then and then you have 18,000

authority having transitions. Multiply that by three or four reps that that are

managing the projects with two being constantly on vacations and the other two arguing with the other ones that are

on vacation because they see things differently. And uh I already hear from some electrician friends that they have

to now because of AI, you mentioned that as well, they have to argue now with

people at the building and safety departments because they they put something into AI and AI gives them

different answers than the actual books, the codes that we have here. that’s already causing a lot of which slows

down the process again because a lot of headaches for both sides slows down the project and obviously who loses in the

whole deal usually it’s the end consumer homeowner business owner whoever is looking to transition to renewable

renewable energy so that could be simplified for sure and I like to compare Europe or Europe Australia we do

bunch of projects we have Australia and friends and and US mostly for the fact to learn from each other what what’s

working over there could potentially work here. What’s not working there and vice versa, that’s how I believe we can

we can move faster and move faster in terms of make proper advancements in

certain areas in a much better way and plus we’re we’re collaborating across continents anyway. So why why don’t we

simplify and like you said make it more universal approach for for for that. So if you if you could explain in under two

hours what your software is capable of, how your clients and customers and users

are benefiting from it the most. That would be great for the for the viewership as well.

So Solar Success really helps any construction company, but we’ve been focused on solar installers. It helps

any construction company break down the tasks that they have to do on any given project into

atomic units into the specific parts that they need to have. And we call those bluActions. So you’ve got an

action on a project. And by breaking it down into that action and building around the actions, we’re able to put

the subject matter like the standard operating procedure for this or which URL you need for the AHJ or how much

money you should expect for this permitting fee. And we’re tying everything to the actions like Legos.

And then each house that comes together, we’ve got this Lego footprint to know

how to put the different types of you need solar and storage. This is how you put that Lego set together. If you need

solar storage and EV charging, then you put this Lego set together. And if you

need to do it in Houston, then you do it according to these fire codes. And if you need to do it in Tucson, you use

these other fire codes. And we essentially have broken down the construction business and all of the

back office tasks and what they need from the field into these Lego pieces.

And that has enabled the business to operate better. The businesses have to get clear about what exactly it is that

they need. We make suggestions about what their best practices ought to be, but they do need to get clear and

socialize it with their workforce so they understand what they’re expected to do and how that’s going to work. But all

of that enables that standardization to happen within a company which is why we

were able to support five of the top 10 resi solar installers. Three of those

five grew up into becoming the top 10. They didn’t start there because they

were able to scale so well. So we look at construction projects differently,

break them into these actions that are reusable components and then that enables the company to

operate at much higher efficiencies. Another model to think about how we’re approaching that work would be the same

thing as the when the industrial re revolution happened. And every time you

went to a blacksmith, they would actually make a different size bolt for your

horse carriage. And then the first thing they did was they standardized the bolts, right? You’ve got the certain

lengths and and widths and then you’ve got the regular versus Phillips connections. They standardize all these

pieces about the bowl and because they used to be 100% custommade every single time and so we are encouraging to move

beyond that but this first step is we have to standardize the bolts what it is that we’re doing to run the business and

they they move forward much more quickly and we see we have one client who was

able to get three times the number of projects through with the same back office staff.

So the 300% growth supported with the exact same people in the back office.

Just think about how much paperwork your boss, previous boss would save and how much better this would be for the

environment, right? So you implemented something like that. I can see an an office with

U-shaped desk and with plenty of paperwork all around him that could could be saved. You’ve mentioned

something really interesting that to socialize with your workforce or with your team. How do you support that for

your clients and customers? We support it with training that you would expect, but our training has got

some jokes and some humor and some other pieces, a lot of rewards, a lot of games. The reality is a lot of the

workforce here, but it’s just a lot of humans respond better to games. So, the first time you need to use the system,

you use it once, you figure out how search works, and then you’re like, “Tell me what the first name is that

starts with Z.” And the people who are paying attention can pop that right up,

you know, and they get the prize. So, we socialize it with a lot of positive

reinforcement, a lot of carrots. the same way that I’m working with my kids,

the same way that I work with when I was on the school board, it was the same way that you worked with parents. It’s just

a lot of positivity and and a lot of wins. Really small wins add up to a lot

of success in the same way. So, it’s almost like the social engineering part of that is the bulk that you need to

have is just finding a lot of small wins and then everyone feels good. Everybody

needs dopamine and oxytocin to head through the day,

especially in a stressful environment that like you said could doesn’t have to

be stressful, at least could be less stressful, which makes it a better place

to work for for everyone. And I I love that analogy. There is a a tool that

productivity app software that I’ve tested. They were winning on product hunt which is a platform where you can

upload software some certain software essentially people vote up and they get a special deal if they’re first first

time users etc. And they were getting a lot of votes. So I paid attention to it. I’ve tried several and they made me work

harder and more in a more complicated way than ever before. So I didn’t like it. But this one is so simple. It’s the

simplest one that I could pass. Literally almost almost like this device obviously a little bit digitalized.

And after every task you get done, you get those gifs or gifs where someone is

like screaming like you’re the champion and like some popular memes and you did it and some reward yourself or relax now

or and things like that. The language alone that they’re using and plus the gifts, plus the description, everything

makes it much fun and like a game. I like the gamification part of it where you just feel so good because you’ve

done something and you maybe done it faster than you estimated your your time

for it, your allocate your time allocation for certain tasks. So that’s that’s a big one. That’s that’s already

something that that definitely caught my attention there. walk us through more perhaps first 30 days or or the

onboarding process for for a company that comes on board, they want to

implement it, they want to socialize with their workforce. What what are the what are the next steps there?

Um the first 30 days are so it typically typically takes 90 days to get fully

onboarded with the system. So, the first 30 days are really about making sure that everybody agrees that we’re using

the same chart of accounts, that we know what an expense is, and we know which expense categories we’re looking at. I

mean, it’s pretty basic. The next one is like that we all have the same definition of an item. So most solar

installers, for instance, they might have a Hanwa 400, but if you look at at

the Q cell site, they actually have, you know, eight different kinds of Hanwa 400, but they never think about that.

They just have it in some generalized category. So they’re not super precise about exactly what they’re ordering or

exactly what they’re selling. So we have to get everybody on the same page about what their items are, what their

categories are, what their actions are, and then what they actually expect the workflows to be. So the first part of it

is actually just kind of like pulling together the lists of things that people have had and making sure that everybody

agrees that these are the right lists. We have had people comment that the

implementation process of getting aligned and having shared understanding about what the lists and the process

were was as much value as the software. And I’m not sure that that’s true

overall, but I think it was true initially because we’ve had multi-year

conflicts get resolved because it’s like, well, what are you expecting to do when you didn’t finish the job in the

one day? Like, what are they supposed to do? And and working through those pieces.

So just so that we have clarity and we do it in a way that’s as easy as possible. We have already kind of

figured out what the best practices are. So we’re just confirming that this is what everybody wants and needs so that

we’re open when there’s something that’s they’re doing differently or they have a different idea or they found some other

best practice themselves. But then also just to make sure that everybody understands this is going to

be how we do things moving forward. So that first part is leadership team

alignment on what it is that you’re doing. The second phase is is where run the data conversions from what their old

system was and we map it to what the new system’s going to be. And then the third phase is training and we do three

walkthroughs. We do a walkthrough where we walk through people’s jobs and we show them what it is that they should be

doing for their daily job and we’ll get feedback about what’s smooth or what’s different or whatever it is cuz when you

see it, it’s different than when you you hear it and we’ll fix those things. The second walk through we have the client

drive and show us that they know how to do the daily job while we’re in the room

and and there’ll be feedback and stuff will come up. And the third walkthrough, they do it without us in the room. And

that gets a whole another level of feedback. It’s like, how did you start? Where did you do this? How did this end?

So, we we go through those three rounds to really test that people have got the systems before we’ll have our cut over

weekend and our go live. I love it. Have you heard about the EOS book series or the system

entrepreneurial operating system? So we we run on EOS.

You do? Great. So have you done it through the EOS? How how do they call

the person? Implement implementing person because I the reason why I’m

saying it it’s it reminded me of almost almost like a role within that within

your company that could be needed where in the EOS world and their book series

they have a book series. They obviously have companies using it, implementing it, but they almost created like a

subindustry where you have people that study it and they know everything about that and they come into your company

almost like on a consultant basis for 90 days or how long it’s needed and they help to implement that. So I thought

this could be something similar that you could introduce into your ecosystem. So

train people or have a training separate training from from your team where they would actually spend a lot more time

with with your clients customers making sure they’re successful they implement it and they go through the training you

just mentioned. Yes, we could totally do that. We have tried to do that in the past and we’ve

found that our employees tend to be more committed than other near solution provider

employees. So we we haven’t been able to sub that very well to to get people to

engage. So I’m not sure if it’s too complex or we haven’t triggered the passions as well or if it just hasn’t

been enough time like EOS has actually been around for a while. Yeah.

But we did we had an implementtor and she was very strict with us about that is not a core value and you have too

many and some of the basic rules that we’re like h that’s too hard can we just

stop yet and she’s like no and it was very helpful. So in in that way it is

our implementation process is a lot of that same kind of handholding that you get your list down correctly you start

converting your data and then you train people and see if they can actually do it in the wild can imagine how how

exciting and stressful this can be at the same time when they start implementing on their own and running through the system but once it’s

operates I can I can also see that the huge benefits of that and simplification

and also can imagine If they do go through the 90-day training and it’s operating, it’s functioning that for the

next decade or multiple decades, they will not have to do any such a big big

movement big moves and steps to change the system unless you you come up with an update and and something that makes

it even easier to operate or better. And for that probably you got to run your your training again if needed if that’s

actually valid for them. And we do we do have regular updates. One of the things I love the most about

this process is it deeply supports continuous improvement. It’s all about

Kaizen actually. So you have to do the big change initially to have the standardized bolt

standardized size bolts or project actions and think this through or bluAction thing and then once you’ve

learned the system the people doing the job can see much better ways to do this,

right? Like we only need to go out and do site surveys if the house is older

than 2016. Cuz if it was built after 2016 in around the Arizona areas that

we’re in, we know that their main panel is up to code cuz it could not have

been, you know, they couldn’t have built the house and had occupancy without it. And so we don’t even need to look for

certain things if it’s or or we could just have a drone go by and make sure

you don’t have shading. Like there’s different ways that people have had ideas of saying this subset of work

doesn’t need to get done anymore. And they can give very precise reasoning and

logic for it. And our system supports having a different workflow for that than what you would do for the old house

that was built in the 1930s. And that

that has been really fun because the employees get to be so much smarter and

then they get to do when their workload goes down. Usually our employees don’t

end up losing their jobs. they end up just kind of increasing their scope of what it is that they’re doing. So they

handle more of actions and more tasks. And so they get to learn new things if they can figure out how to make it how

to make their current work get done better. And so you end up just compounding these continuous

improvements over the years. And that’s why the companies are just so much better run because they have this

continuous improvement. Employee engagement goes up. It’s really fun. and

we help when we can, but we’re just mostly watch. They have great ideas once

they they get into the group of love it. And I love how how it all makes sense. There’s uh you know, when we were

testing a bunch of tools, a lot of stuff that they had was and there was no even

close to the support wasn’t even close to what you offered there. But there were so many different things that we

didn’t need that it was just discouraging for the entire team. Training on on your own at your own pace

takes time and you have to understand it or someone has to study it more than some than anything else, right? So they

have to commit. I remember some people in the leadership spent hundreds of hours trying to understand and pick the

tool that we could implement and and software and was just so complicated. 60% of the things that they had on the

platform were not needed or not up to date or not current with our standards where we were operating. So I like how

the way you describe it that everything makes sense to it simplifies your essentially day-to-day operations so you

don’t you can find better ways to to to grow your company. So I love that. But

how do you approach expansion? What are the challenges when it comes to expand expansion for your company? Are you

mainly essentially growing word of mouth or what’s your approach to that? What are

the challenges with it? We have been growing via word of mouth for the most part and that has actually been its own challenge. So since the

interest rates went up in solar and 85% of residential solar was financed, it

effectively doubled the cost of residential solar. And then the big bill that just got passed also is going to be

increasing the cost of solar by 30% at the end of this calendar year. We’ve had

a series of challenges in the industry. One of the key things that we needed to do that it that we’re still working on

is that we also support larger solar projects, asset managers that are still

doing well in building more utility scale solar companies and we hadn’t

focused on them and developed the language and the stories in the same way that we did with the residential solar

companies. So the software and the benefits are still are there. I mean all

of the the benefits of standardizing and simplifying are there and we just need

to pivot our focus so that we’re expanding more into that the commercial

and utility scale solar projects. So it has been a challenge. We’ve been working

with a variety we have existing clients in those areas. So, we’ve been doing lots of client discovery about what

exactly they like and don’t like and getting better stories, but we’ve kind of almost needed to start again

um the residential solar pieces work and we we’ve got that in place, but we’ve

we’ve actually needed to remarket so that we’re getting this other segment as

well. So it is so some of this feels like starting over and I’m certainly

going to be smarter and have been smarter and have we’ve been doing it so far than I was the first time and it’s

it’s still a it’s still a real journey. So I I don’t know if it’s always like

this or at some point in time if you just scale up. The article that I’ve

been been really and the piece I’ve really been thinking a lot about is founder mode versus manager mode. Have

you read that? Maybe not. So, in the founder mode, and I think this came out

by Brian, the CEO of Airbnb, Brian Chesky.

Yeah. Um, but I’m not 100% sure. But the founder mode is where you understand

everything. So Matt, when you’re talking about your 51 projects and you know where everything was at and it worked

with your system, that’s founder mode working where all of the glue between

all of the pieces is you are that glue that’s holding that all together. So

it’s much more efficient. It’s higher quality. It’s faster. When you want to

make a change, you know where to go and it’s surgical and effective. And every founder I know is told that oh then you

should hire professional managers who are going to come in and take over some section of your business. But then it’s

it’s like a puppet string and now you’ve got some weird joint and the founder is trying to get that manager to do the

right thing and keep the quality and have the depth of understanding about while 80% of the time that would be the

right thing is to go with the metrics in this 20% case the metrics are actually

wrong because this other factor is going on. And so

without that intuition and that understanding, the professional managers often turn a startup into kind of

mushrain where everything has to be so regimented and and only done run on KPIs without an

actual understanding of how things really done that add value. It’s a little bit like working in all

the financial engineering that we did on Wall Street versus actually adding value

by, you know, screwing in bolts to make the energy transition happen. So, it’s

it’s I haven’t figured out I I did not navigate that journey well with my

professional managers. my professional managers were were challenging for me to

to figure out how to make them effective. And what I’m finding now is

that it takes a completely different type of training for the managers to be to have

that degree of effectiveness and an ownership attitude. And we’re using a

new tool that I’ve never seen really discussed or applied to business.

But David Bow wrote a book called dialogue and it’s just a thin little book. And

David Bow is a physicist BHM. And we actually have meetings where the entire

purpose of the meeting is is we sit around like a campfire and we talk about the problem and we bring up our

perspectives and weigh different points of views until we develop amongst each

other a shared understanding about what’s working or not working and where

the nuance and the pivot points really are, where the leverage points are.

And out of that, the leadership team is making better decisions than they were

before when I just had managers with a silo and clearly defined structures and

KPIs kind of things went really poorly in my

opinion. And this other way while it doesn’t actually

take more time, it takes less time. Isn’t that funny? It takes less time,

but we literally have meetings where we just sit around the and talk about whatever our focus question is for the

day until we have shared understanding with everybody on the team. It could be a delivery issue, it could be a product

issue, it could be a go to market issue, but everybody is actually interrelated

to make that issue work. And so we focus on on that together. And that also

compounds over time. And while I have a much less prestigious management team

than I had before, I’ve got a much more effective management team than I had before, even

without the college degrees and the fancy school names and the other stuff that I had earlier. So, it’s it’s been a

real journey thinking about what it takes to scale, especially a company

that is really about service and helping people grow their

businesses and taking that complexity and making it simpler. Like, it’s really

a it’s almost a kind of coaching. It’s like a professional

development for an entire company to go through this process.

and and there’s a lot of nuance in there and to have shared understanding has

been more important than any KPIs or other metrics that we have. So I’ve

gotten we still have those KPIs and metrics because you know data software person but our our shared understanding

is has been much more my priority and what I see my job should be. So I am the

most productive when I I create an environment that’s got constructive tension that is safe but we

can actually work out whatever it is that’s not quite seeing eye to eye.

So my job is now to create shared understanding and generate the you know

kind of elevate where we need to have constructive tension. And after 50

minutes of our conversation, I can tell that you’re the right person to do that. Because all I want now is to sit down

and be educated by you. The way you explain things, the way you explain complicated and complex things in simple

terms so people who know less like me can understand that. I think you’re

you’re going to excel at that role. Thank you so much for sharing that that insight. That’s actually pretty pretty

interesting. I have a book upstairs my library titled dialogue. However,

it’s not a short book. It’s pretty thick. I have to look up that who wrote that one. Maybe there’s dialogue

something. But I remember I didn’t finish this one. I I read few chapters start implementing and forgot to get

back to it. But maybe maybe I’ll I’ll look up the one by David Bo. It sounds interesting as well.

Yeah, it’s very short and it’s got like forks and a dinner wear set on it. It’s a very odd

I’ll check it out. odd cover. Jen, thank you so much for this conversation. It was a pleasure.

You met it. It’s been great talking to you. I look forward to seeing you online and

following your journey and how you’re going to adopt to the new world, how you’re actually going to be take take a

leadership role because you have access to so much intelligence across different industries, across different companies

that that’s needed. Authority having jurisdiction. those 18,000 authority

having jurisdiction need you and and your solutions. Appreciate you spending this uh lovely afternoon with me here

and um good luck with unpacking and I will I’ll talk to you soon.

Okay. Thank you so much, Matt. Have a great one.