The Next Billion-Dollar Energy Opportunity | Ep. 92 [Andrew Stock]

What does it take to build successful companies across multiple industries and then apply those lessons to one of the biggest challenges in commercial energy? In this episode, Andrew Stock joins Dr. Leeanne Aguilar to discuss the future of solar, energy storage, geothermal power, and the critical role of financing in helping projects get built. Andrew explains why many solar companies struggle, how outdated distribution models inflate costs, and why the next wave of innovation will come from improving efficiency across the entire supply chain.

The conversation also explores entrepreneurship, leadership, AI, operational systems, and the mindset required to identify opportunities before the market catches on. Whether you're a business owner, investor, energy professional, or simply curious about the future of renewable energy, you'll gain valuable insights into the trends reshaping the industry and the strategies that separate long-term winners from everyone else.

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Transcript

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 0:06

What happens when a builder of sales engines, systems, and high growth companies turns his attention to one of the biggest bottlenecks in commercial energy: getting the right equipment to the right project at the right time, without all the waste in between. Welcome to Industry Ignited. I'm your host, Dr. Leanne Aguilar. And today I'm joined by Andrew Stock, co-founder and CEO of Green Raven, a direct from manufacturer supplier of power generation equipment and financing. Andrew, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Awesome, great. Glad to be here.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 0:36

Yeah, thanks for joining me. So, Andrew, your career spans sales leadership, operations, product management, SaaS consulting, and now commercial energy distribution. Looking back, what threads have connected all those chapters?

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Well, I mean, I think the most common thread probably is I have an um kind of an addiction to efficiency. That's the best way I can word that is looking for whatever inefficiencies are involved in something. Now it could be, like you said, sales leadership. Okay, well, what's missing, right? Because you're okay, well, am I hiring the right people, providing the right tools, giving the right training? There's going to be a limited number of things that might be wrong. Okay, so fine. So find where the inefficiency is, hire better, train better, lead better, remove their obstacles, give them the right tools. Okay, find that. Or maybe it's operations, your workflow, things like that, or basically anything. Uh that's like kind of the always been the common thread is what is the inefficient thing that's happening, whether it's the before I got there or even while I'm there, and then fixing that thing. That would be the most common thread that I I habitually try to solve.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 1:38

Oh, I love that. So an addiction to efficiency.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 1:42

And were you always like that? I mean, can you see that like even when growing up or yeah, in your Yes, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Call it a mental deficiency. Yeah, I don't know. It's always been that way. Yeah. That's uh I don't care. I'm trying to think of a spot in my life when I wasn't like that. Now that's just part of how my brain works, I guess.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 1:59

Well, I don't think that's a bad thing. So that's awesome. Now you built your early career in staffing and recruiting before making the jump into solar. What did you see in the market that told you solar was the next wave worth betting on?

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Well, if you look at obviously some of this just comes from age, you know, experience. There's always these cyclical patterns. There's always the next big thing, right? So for me, I got into the staffing industry during the dot-com era, the late 90s, uh, rode that wave. That kind of died down once job words were invented. Having a headhunter, which is what I was, wasn't as necessary. So a lot of people moved over to the real estate market. I didn't, I stayed in staffing, but most of my friends moved over to the next big wave. Then, of course, 2008 recession hits, that dies down. And I remember just watching and thinking, okay, well, hang on, there's all these cyclical waves. Uh, what's the next big wave? So a lot of researching, thinking about it, reading stuff, just I don't know, being a nerd seemed this is back in gosh, I don't remember the year now, 2014-ish. Uh, when I was reading a lot of articles at the time about um just energy pricings and what's happening on a global scale. That was just seemed obvious that wait a second, Florida is the next big wave. And so I took a gamble. I was a vice president of um a global 100 company. So cushy job, base salaries, all that jazz. It's a gamble, but at the same time, it was too cushy for me. I don't work like that. I'm more of a kind of a risk taker kind of guy. So yeah, for me, I just looked at the market conditions, and you always should. You should always look for where's an inefficiency or something that seems unfair or a lack of something and solve the problem. It kind of ties that, you know, addiction to efficiency thing.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 3:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

And so yeah, that's just seemed obvious to me.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 3:52

So it sounds like you're you were very proactive though and intentional about looking for the next big thing.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Always. Yeah.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 4:00

Yeah. Now you said you like building and or fixing things and watching them blossom. When did you realize that was really your core identity as a leader?

SPEAKER_00 4:12

You know, it's funny. I don't think I did for decades. I used to teach eighth grade American history. So I love teaching people I always have. I've always just loved teaching in general, right? And then it just slowly have it crept up on me over the span of decades to realize that if you combine the skill sets I happen to possess that, hey, be a good coach, be a good leader, lead from the front, look around the room, who's got the greatest work ethic in the room, whoever it is, work harder. Am I gonna be there the first and then the last? Yes. Am I gonna outwork you? I'm gonna outthink you, I'm gonna be in that competitive drive. You start piecing all these things together. And before you know it, I looked back, honestly, it wasn't until I was probably 50 years old till I realized, holy crap, I've been like the leader everywhere I go. It wasn't intentional, it just happened, I guess.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 5:00

Yeah. Yeah, interesting. So that that work ethic that you described, you know, being the first in, the last out, is that something you you still see today?

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Yes. But hands down. It's it's what I hire for. Like I don't if let's say I was trying to hire someone for I'm trying to think of a task, just say it was a salesperson, okay? Maybe I'm selling wrenches. Do I care if you have experience selling wrenches? Not really. What I care about is your per you have personality, brain, and one heck of a work ethic.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 5:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

And you have ethics, right? That's it. I don't really care about anything else because those are things I can't teach or I can't build from. So yeah, I'd say pretty much I've always lived by the that ethos of always be ethical, always do the right thing. Anyone who knows me will tell you that's how I insist. But yeah, be the first guy in, be the last guy out, work out, uh, work harder, work smarter, and whoever's the best person in the room, be a little bit better than that person. And you do fine. Yeah.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 5:52

Now, do you think your experience staffing with the staffing you know companies helped you make better choices when it comes to hiring with your firms?

SPEAKER_00 6:00

I mean, at first, I yes. I mean, I think I took I did my first job as an official manager over of sales teams back in 2000, maybe 2001, can't remember the year now. I'd already been in staffing for several years at that point, but it wasn't until you actually become an actual manager of people that you start realizing uh the importance. Oh my God, it's so underrated. Who you hire means more than almost anything. Right. I don't even know if it was because I was in the staffing industry. I think it was just experience of making bad decisions.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 6:38

Right. I know. I I think that that's just sometimes the best way to learn is just by making a mistake, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Hiring the wrong people a few times.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 6:46

Hiring the wrong people. Yeah, absolutely. Now, from scaling small firms to turning around major divisions inside large organizations, what lessons from those earlier transformation roles shaped how you lead Green Raven today?

SPEAKER_00 7:01

You know, I think a lot of it is um it is so overlooked, operational stuff. Like everyone thinks that operations is boring because it sounds boring, but it's so critical. I'm very methodical, very organized. If you go look at my company's Google Drive and how the folders are organized, or how schedules are managed, or workflow of whose or job responsibilities, maybe, and uh where let's say you're running a team. Obviously, I have where I had larger teams and dozens of offices. Well, how does the workflow happen from starting at the very beginning, from marketing all the way through to first contact to first sale to fulfillment to customer support to delivery? And you start thinking, okay, what's that smooth handoff look like? From the it's like that concept, I used to think was so boring, like when I was younger, of course. Now it's my lifeblood. It's the I'm again I'm addicted to efficiency. Part of that is also being addicted to what is a customer experience like and how do I make mine better? And how what does that operational workflow look like? Both internally, so we as an organization operate better, and from the customer standpoint, what their experience is like. That's all how well did you build your operational infrastructure? I don't think I understood that when I was younger. So that comes a lot, a combination really, from working, obviously building many startups to working at a very large global public company. I've worked for a few, but I think it's just a blend of experience over time kind of really led me to realize that it's all about that, man. Your operational infrastructure and having someone with the brains and to organize it properly and analyze it and be smart and gather analytics. It's there's a lot, man. It's just a lot of it's just experience. You know, screw stuff up enough and eventually you'll get it right.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 8:43

So do you use a uh process management tool?

SPEAKER_00 8:46

I've written a lot of CRMs, at least some I've written from scratch, some just like all out of the box stuff. I'm pretty big on data analytics, just gathering data, right? Then what do you do with it? Or do you take action items from it? So yeah, I'm pretty data centric, I guess you could say, right? So usually that comes from whatever CRM I'm using at the moment, but that helps you identify your inefficiencies, right? Whether it was your the lag time from this call to that baton being passed to the next person in the chain, for example, or maybe it's job cost analysis, which no one pays attention to, which they should. That helps you identify those data points help you identify the inefficiencies in running any business. So yeah, pretty big on that.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 9:28

How has AI impacted your process flow? Inefficiency, I know.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Uh from a personal perspective, I've always worked very, I worked very hard and very fast. So I've always, I mean, let's toot my own horn, but always felt like I'm about twice as productive as anybody else. But once you kicked AI into it, oh my God, I can do personally the work, I can do five times much more. I can do so much more because I do use a lot of now. That's on a personal perspective, right? That could be something down like looking for ideas on how to on marketing campaigns or how to use this particular software tool or whatever it might be. That's on a personal level. So it's put my personal productivity over the top. That's ridiculous. But I get done and it can't, I can manage so much more. On a broader perspective, what I'm looking at for AI is I haven't gotten there yet. I'm still working on it, but it is more from like a marketing uh management standpoint, customer engagement standpoint. I think the the future of say AI assistance is pretty big. And I can't wait till I get to that point. I've got I've got a lot of work to do. I see where it can go, and I'm not there yet.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 10:33

So many opportunities, and everything is evolving so quickly. It's like you know, by the time you implement it, it's outdated.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

It's tough, man. I know. Yeah.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 10:44

So Green Raven is focused on commercial solar and power generation hardware distribution. But it sounds like the company is really solving a much broader supply chain and execution problem. What gap did you see that made you want to build this business?

SPEAKER_00 10:58

I think the biggest one is a lack of information from the end consumer. And again, this is I know not everyone who's listening to this is going to be from my industry, but there's limited information and there's so many gaps in the industry. So, for example, most solar companies are small, like really small. In the United States, anyways, the industry is very fragmented. You've got over 100,000 solar companies, so well over that actually. There's really 20,000 in California. It's immense. And the vast majority of those are what we all call truck in a truck, right? Is the guy with four employees and he happens to own a truck. It's a very fragmented industry. So those that's your industry right now. They don't they're not sitting on a big stockpile of cash, right? So for them, everything is like get a project, get it installed, get paid, somehow cover the cost of the hardware of that project. It's a very cash flow, it's a problem. Uh so the gap I saw was well, they're all limited to going to maybe three different distributors for their materials. And all three of those companies, I don't know if I should name drop, but typically their markup is 100% really high. But they can do that because they're offering a line of credit, right? That's the holy grail right there. You go to the distributors out there, the little guys, the guys like myself that are smaller, don't have line of credit. So if you're a little solar company, you have to go through one of the big three, even though the prices are super bloated, just because they offer credit terms. Right. Well, that seems dumb. Wait a second. So if I were to just go and establish my own line of credit, which I did for Green Raven, we can offer uh a name drop. So CED is offering uh a $500,000 line of credit to his installers. I can offer a million dollar line of credit, and I don't put mine doesn't put a lien on that end property. Okay, so but at the same time, I don't have that bloated infrastructure of 400 warehouses I have to pay for with their staff. We don't do that.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

I'm kind of whittling out, okay, what are the inefficiencies? Well, get rid of all that infrastructure. You don't need it. It's just not necessary. Offer a line of credit, reach out to that 95% of the industry that is chucking a truck. All they needed was a line of credit, and now they can buy all of their hardware, it's half price because they're not paying for all the inefficiencies out there. And they still get that line of credit that makes it so their families and their them and their employees and their families can do really well without running out of money, which is an epidemic in the solar industry, right? Companies running out of cash and then collapsing. So we're trying to solve a lot of gaps, right? And I think we kind of nailed it.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 13:37

So for people outside the industries, tell us more about the biggest inefficiencies today between manufacturers, finance providers, EPCs, developers, and buyers.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Well, each one of them is gonna have a different issue, right? So manufacturers, the biggest problem is they need to be on an authorized vendor list for the finance companies. You gotta realize that most of them are not. Now, those finance companies are more or less, how do I word this, in bed largely with the distribution companies. Well, the distributor is only going to offer these, I'll make it up, you know, 10 brands, the solar panel. Well, shoot, there's 5,000 brands. So if you're the manufacturer, you're fighting like anything you can to get brand recognition, to get on an authorized vendor list for the finance company, which gets you carried by the major distributors, and they're all kind of uh bottlenecked right there. Now, if you're the installer, going down that line, you said, so the EPC, you're the installer. Most of them are just going to buy their product from whatever CED offered them or Solar Gent, Busco, whatever, whatever that distributor gave them, which is a choice between these 10 brands or 20 brands, whatever. Um, and they have to go through that because of that bottleneck with the finance companies. There's a real bottleneck right in there, right? It's a problem. So the biggest problem for the solar companies is cash flow. They need to find a way to uh make all of this pencil somehow. But because that loaded infrastructure between the traditional distribution, kind of working with the authorized vendor list, AVL from the finance companies, causes a bottleneck, which causes uh artificial price inflation. So now that solar installer who's already struggling to stay in business is paying twice as much for his hardware. So there's like that's the problem of this whole thing, right? Is there's a bottleneck that doesn't need to be there. And a lot of it driving it right now, today's market, we're in April 2026, um, is the tax incentives, right? So everyone's trying to get the very last drop they can out of the ITC, the investment tax credit, which means it has to be domestic content and has to be fiat compliant and not from a PFE. And there's like all these requirements, which again cause a market pressure on what hardware we're all allowed to use, which when again you constrain supply, which is what's happened, that drives pricing way up. So there's a lot of stuff in the industry that are kind of artificial that don't need to be there. That whole tax incentive and all that, you know, non-domestic blah, blah, blah, that's all gonna go away. A year from now, no one's gonna give a crap. People are gonna be looking at what is the cheapest product in the market that is still a quality product with a good warrant. That's all that's gonna matter, which is what I'm what we're at Green Raven, what we're preparing for. How do we compare the real world of what's going to be a year from now? No one's gonna care about fiat compliance a year from now.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 16:19

Interesting. So the incentives are expiring this year?

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Yeah, basically July 4th. Well, the residential projects that already is gone as of last December. The commercial one for commercial projects goes away. Basically, the job has to be started in some manner before July 4th of 2026. After that, all the incentives are gone, which is gonna totally remove that bottleneck that's caused that ridiculously inflated pricing.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 16:45

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

There's a lot going on in the industry that's gonna change. I'm excited about it.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 16:48

Yeah. And are those incentives are they federal or are they state-based?

SPEAKER_00 16:53

It's all federal. Oh, the federal. 100% federal, yeah.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 16:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

So for your your taxes at the end of the year, basically, you're getting so if you combine that, if you remove the false pressure on the market based on federal tax incentives, and you can marry that with getting an education to the solar installers of, hey, guess what? There's more than those 20 brands on the market. In fact, there's thousands. Uh so let's find you the best product at the best price. And I'm and I you're gonna see this uh a year and a half from now. All the hardware is gonna be half the price of what people are paying today. I mean, we're even at half the price. Just wait. Once you remove those artificial pressures, what's gonna happen to hardware pricing is gonna be fantastic.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 17:32

Yeah. Now you talk a lot about practical equipment, supply chain reliability, and project execution. Why are those fundamentals still such a major pain point in an industry that has matured so much?

SPEAKER_00 17:45

I don't think it has. The industry, you said the industry had matured so much. The industry isn't. I think the industry is a toddler. The inefficiencies in this industry are rampant. It's crazy. I've been a consultant for I think four different solar companies I've helped build over the years. And every one of them, or most of my friends are owners of solar companies. It's rampant. It's bad. Bad management. People who they're again, you're the owner of a solar company, we'll call it chuck in a truck, which is the vast majority. They're not gathering analytics or job cost analysis. They think, oh, well, giving a building permit in such and such county is $400. Not really, because I'm in a position to that building permit, the structural engineering stamp, the electrical engineering stamp, resubmittal fees, and that's actually $1,500. You got to think in the mind of wait, we're doing 20 of these jobs a month, and that's just that. Then you go install a job, you think, oh, we can install it for this kind of cost of labor. Well, they don't know that really you're gonna have to do multiple truck rolls with two, three guys, let's call it, add up the actual labor cost. So they're not making as much money as they think they are, but they don't gather analytics, job cost analysis, for example. When I say that it's not grown up, that's just one element. And then you look at five years ago, the average solar sales guy was making $10,000 on a commission selling a residential solar project. That's absurd. That's just absolutely absurd. Because there's no, even today, there's very minimal, if any, regulation on this. Like in real estate, you have to get a license to sell a house, let's call it. Or you have to get a series seven if you're a financial advisor. You have to get some kind of, but that doesn't exist in the solar space. So when you're saying now that some for an industry that's quote, mature, it is not. It is still the Wild West.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 19:33

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Still the Wild West. We all know what the Wild West is and we're in it, but it's getting better.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 19:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Thank God. Uh yeah, yeah.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 19:44

So it's not new, it's been around a while, but it's still like you said, there are it's not very regulated as far as like who can who can sell it.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

There's not any kind of certification or lack of education or just knowledge from this the this group, this solar company might be great construction guys and do really quality work, but do they know how to use a spreadsheet and do job cost analysis? Probably not. Some do, not many. It's just it's still young. The industry is still young and immature. It's got a long way to go.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 20:14

Yeah. Now, Green Raven is also providing finance products for installers across solar, storage, geothermo, and commercial generators. How important is it to solve capital access and hardware access together rather than as separate problems?

SPEAKER_00 20:29

Well, there's two different pieces of finance. So one would be those solar companies need to be able to finance the projects themselves, right? Um, they need access to finance tools, which are heavily dependent, again, on the tax credits and subsidy stuff that we talked about earlier. That's a problem. I've pretty much made a career out of networking with people. Literally, that's how I make a living. So a lot of what Green Raven does isn't even not, we're not doing this for money. We do this because it's the right thing to do. Is when I'm talking to this company over here, he says, Hey, I really need a finance tool I can use for, I don't know, nonprofits with, you know, blah, blah, blah, this situation. Do you know anybody? Yes, I do. I make that connection happen. I do that all day, every day. It's just who do you know? Who do you know? So I get a lot of those kinds of calls. A lot of it is finance related.

SPEAKER_02 21:16

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Uh, so that's one side of financing. And it's really, really important because most, well, if you actually ask the average American how how they think solar projects are paid for, they think it's all cash. It's not, right? There's a lot of education that needs to happen in that realm. But even the finance world for solar is still, to me, very it's not mature yet. That's the best way, and it's definitely not stable. And the changing tax situation with random tariffs coming and going and whatever is not helping. It makes sure it's very unit's very rocky, best way I can say that. So that's one side of finance is how do these solar projects get financed to begin with? I do a lot of Connecting the dots and people that I know who know people and connect them all and ta-da. Um, the other piece of it is what I alluded to earlier, uh, that line of credit concept, meaning all those solar companies, and like I said, there's a ton. They all think they have to work with CED or sold agent because that's the only way they can get the line of credit to stay in business, which means they think they have to pay literally 100% markups on their hardware because they don't know any better. I need to somehow get that education out there. That you know what? Don't let that line of credit problem stop you from cutting your costs in half. It's totally doable. You just have to find the right green raven.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 22:40

Okay, right, right. So you're helping educate people, is what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Yeah, yeah, that's a lot of it. And it's uh it's harder than it sounds. But if I could get the word out that, hey, man, don't be limited to paying ridiculous prices to infrastructures that are so bloated and inefficient, there's a better way. Uh so that's the other side of finance. The solar company needs to be able to finance their hardware. That is what we unlocked uh just a few months ago, which is that's gonna be a game changer for sure.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 23:09

Yeah, okay. So, like you just said, the current just distribution model is bloated and expensive. So, what specifically is broken in the traditional hardware distribution system and how are you approaching it differently?

SPEAKER_00 23:21

A lot of it, well, first of all it's I know I spoke to some of this. Those distributors are having a huge operating cost, right? So this reminds me of a different business I fixed a long time ago where it was a lot of brick and mortar, uh, which a lot of it just sat around empty with, I mean, no customers, just staff. And I remember looking at that, like, wait a second, this isn't 1954. This is it, this is dumb. So I shut down a ton of those, consolidated some stuff, just kind of re-orgot a business model. It's like, okay, this now makes sense. I think this that that same problem holds true in the distribution model, where you've got a lot of warehouses that are unnecessary. They could a lot of now, mind you, sometimes a solar company might need to buy, I don't know, X some rails for this one project or a couple of pallets of panels for this one project. Sure. In those situations, just the traditional distribution might make sense. The pricing is going to be dumb because you're buying such a small quantity, but okay, that kind of works. You're still paying ridiculous prices because you have to pay for the rest of that infrastructure. So a lot of what we're trying to do is say, you know what? For the customers out there that are buying, say, commercial, which uh commercial solar is rapidly growing. It's gotten insane in the last couple of years. They're not buying two pallets, they're buying two container trucks worth. And if they're buying that from a traditional distributor, that's just a lack of information and they don't know. More importantly, if as I think most of them don't understand the options that are on the market, meaning it doesn't have to be one of these 10 brand names that you know because that's what CED carried. Right. What? There's a thousand other products out there. I'm working with one now. I'm not going to name drop, but it's the new manufacturing facility in Georgia. So it's domestic content. The product itself, if you nerd out and go through the data sheet, is significantly better than almost anything on the market. And I can get it at half the price of what the name brands are, and it's a better product. It's tier one, better temperature coefficiency down the line, better product, but no one's ever heard of it. Sure. How do you get the word out? That's a major gap right there. How do you get the education to those solar companies that you know what? But you have more options than you're aware of. And don't let that line of credit thing stop you. There are better products.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 25:41

Right. Well, and I think it comes down to, like you said, education and credibility with all these options out there, unless if it's not being sold by one of the big names, then how do people trust it? How do people know that it's a good quality product?

SPEAKER_00 25:54

You gotta be a nerd and read the data sheet.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 25:56

Yeah, read the read the spec sheet for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Or just be open to it. Honestly, that's the real thing. Just be open to learning about it.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 26:03

Yeah. Now, are they offering like warranties and such that will help give some assurance? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

The one that I'm alluding to, it's a 30-year warranty that includes shipping and labor. No one does this, by the way. The warranty on a solar panel is just, oh yeah, one of your panels, you know, takes a nosedive, we'll ship you a new one. But you, Mr. Cusper, have to pay for the shipping cost and the labor cost to install it, which is way more money than the actual panel itself. Right. From these guys that I'm referring to, that includes all of it. It's not just a replacement panel, it's also the shipping and the labor. That's a big deal. Uh, but you you, as a the owner of a solar company, don't even know this brand exists. That's the thing that's nuts. There's better products at half the price with a better warranty, and you don't know about it. That's my next hill I have to tackle.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 26:54

So you were mentioning like the tax credits expiring. And so as tax credits and domestic content rules and compliance requirements continue to reshape the market, how are those policy and sourcing pressures changing what commercial energy buyers need from their partners?

SPEAKER_00 27:10

I think increasingly, well, at least in the commercial world, they are more open to taking a phone call. A lot of it's just also just personal contacts because I've been around a while. A lot of so I can open some doors maybe.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

But in the commercial world, because they're buying larger quantities, and they were referred to me by Joe Blow, who knows me, trusts me, has worked with me for God knows how many years. I can get that phone call. They're more open to saying, well, hang on a second, I've never heard of that brand, but send me the data sheet. Uh, those commercial installers typically aren't as limited by that line of credit uh line of credit availability, and they're not buying in small volume. So that's kind of the direction of like what I'm spending a lot of my time on now. They're the it's it's low-hanging fruit because they're more receptive to options on the market, right? The chuck in a truck, small residential uh installers, not as open to change, and they don't know. And that's uh that's gonna be a long haul.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 28:10

Right, yeah. So, what kind of customers are you best positioned to serve right now? And where are you seeing the strongest demand across solar storage, geothermal, geothermal, and backup generation?

SPEAKER_00 28:22

Well, one of the big ones, but I don't know if enough people, I I know everything's like a buzzword is like AI, right? Everyone's like, everyone loves the whole AI buzzword. They require a lot of electricity. The data centers, I'm sorry, that are running the AI are uh oh my god, they use so much electricity. One decent sized data center is enough as like a small city, right? And they're we're still at the early stages. Where do you think that power comes from? I mean, if you follow the path, there's tons of documentation. You can read it on your own. What happens as the AI keeps growing and that computing power and the how much electricity they consume? Where's that power coming from? I think that's a big one. I'm very interested in kind of the some of the um partnerships and calls we've been doing on the geothermal front because they can produce a lot of electricity, very, very low cost. That that's an exciting piece. How fast we can deploy, I think, is uh to like a new data center coming online, that's a problem. There's a big pathway there. Obviously, in the uh storage is also a big thing. We talk about grid resiliency, which is not great, and depends on where you are in the country, of course. I'm sure if you're in Omaha, it's fine. If you're anywhere in California, probably not so fine. So, yeah. Um, therefore, batteries become a bigger play. So, as obviously our electrical grid has gotten older and degraded over time and not been replaced or upgraded. I think you're seeing you're gonna see more and more lack of stability, which is where that battery play is gonna come in. Uh, we're already starting to see the beginning of that. There's a lot of opportunity for growth. Uh, I think panels, solar panels, the technology hasn't isn't growing by leaps and bounds anymore. It's growing by millimeters. The biggest change there is just gonna be opening that supply base globally, so people start realizing, oh, wait a second, there's a lot of really, really good product out there at half the price. That's gonna be the big change on the solar panel front. On the storage side, pricing has come way down over the last 10 years. It's been ridiculous.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 30:19

Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Battery that used to be $30,000 uh 10 years ago, you can now at wholesale, anyways, get that same battery. I had a call today for a lithium-iron battery where my cost was twelve hundred dollars. Wow. Oh my god.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 30:34

That's that's wild. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

That's a big difference, right?

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 30:38

Big difference. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:39

Um, again, when we were talking earlier about the the how mature the industry was, and I was like, I wouldn't say that. It's very much it's got a long way to go, but we're I'm proud to say we're heading down the right path. Uh, and I I can't even pick a piece of the industry, like you said, was it solar panels, storage, is it generators, is it geothermal? They all have tremendous potential. So uh it's really hard to focus on one, but we'll see what I can do.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 31:06

Yeah. So when it comes to these large-scale commercial you know installations, what percentage of their electricity is is covered by solar? How much of the overall? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

Depends on the footprint, right? I mean, if you're we're talking about something small, like let's say it was a church, okay, they're not gonna have a ton of land, right? They may not have the footprint to cover everything, but generally speaking, I would say, at least as far as what I've seen, it's all of it, right? Um yeah, I don't, I mean, the only limitation is space, and that's when you start thinking again, I met with a gentleman building a commercial property here in Northern California, doesn't have a lot of room, but he needs a constant, very high volume of electricity. So the conversation went geothermal, better fit for him. Very small footprint, and it produces uh enough electricity to run a city, and it takes a footprint, maybe I don't know, what was it, 1200 square feet?

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 32:02

Oh, okay, right.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

There's solutions out there, they're still kind of evolving in time. But generally speaking, to answer your question if I had solar on my property, what percentage am I expecting that solar to cover? All of it.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 32:14

Okay, right. And are there circumstances where it even feeds back into the grid and then they're getting uh credit?

SPEAKER_00 32:22

I mean, if you're in depends on what state you're in or what utility you're under, I should say. There are some, it's there's a lot, it's called net metering, though how you're overproducting because during your solar is only making electricity during the day. Well, if you're only using that much of it, what happened to the other bit? Well, you're either storing that into a battery or you're selling it to the utility. In some utilities, it works out great, like a lot of the markets in Texas, for example, uh, will have a one-to-one ratio. Meaning, if I kicked over, I don't know, make up a number of 500 kilowatt hours of electricity surplus to the grid, then that night, when I'm using electricity from the grid, my first 500 kilowatt hours was free, right? That's a one-to-one ratio. In some markets, it doesn't work like that. California definitely doesn't. You're gonna sell it. I'm in, I'm personally in Northern California, so it's PGE, Pacific Gas and Electric. Running price, probably around 40 cents a kilowatt hour when you're depending on the time of day and all that and time of year. If you're pushing electricity to the grid, depending on time of day and blah, blah, blah, month of the year, you're gonna get on average maybe two and a half to three cents a kilowatt hour for the power you give them, but then you're buying it back later that night at 40 cents more.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 33:28

That's insane.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

That's nuts. I'm gonna sell you this for two dollars and I'm gonna buy it back for $40 in about three hours. Right. No, that makes no sense. Right, which is why you have batteries in California because you have to be to the grid. So the answer that's a hard one because it just varies by utility and location.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 33:46

Yeah. And on average, what would you say is the time for return on investment?

SPEAKER_00 33:51

Again, that's gonna vary on where you are and how you finance it. If you went with what's called a power purchase agreement, PPA, you're just paying for the electricity the system makes. That's it. So you're literally saving money the first day it got turned on and probably for the next few decades. So there's no ROI discussion. I have read this on Reddit a thousand times. Hey, what's my ROI on this? How long is it gonna take to break even? Depends. Are you paying cash for it? Are you doing a PPA? Kind of like a lease, if you think of it that way. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 34:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

Um, if I'm paying cash for it, other variables, what's my utility price? Am I in, I don't know, Missouri, where the average price of electricity is 12 cents, or am I in Sacramento where my average price is, you know, maybe 40 cents? Thinking per kilowatt hour, right? So that payback period wildly varies, depends on where you are.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 34:41

Got yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

I mean, never. I can't even imagine a place where it's not. I that's it's ridiculous. Yeah.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 34:49

So when you look at the competitive landscape, what will separate the winners from the companies that struggle over the next few years?

SPEAKER_00 34:56

Building better relationships. Well, let's break that up. If you're referring to my industry, distribution, build really good relationships. That's a big piece of it. Because if I'm working with some company that I found on an ad, I clicked on a LinkedIn, they're out of whatever random country, and it's just because I saw a price that looked really appealing and I bought it. Okay, do you have a relationship with them? What if you get that palette and some of it's broken or it didn't show up on time? Or I've had this happen where the first half of the top of that palette was the correct product, but the bottom half was some other brand, right? That's happened before too.

SPEAKER_02 35:31

So oh, yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

So when you call your distributor who sent that to you, do they answer the phone? Do they solve the problem? Will they take a loss on something just to make things right? Probably not. If it's some rando you found on LinkedIn. Whereas if you were working with Brain Raven, you're just gonna call me, or you're gonna call Jason, or you're gonna call somebody on my staff, um, and we're gonna make it right. So I think that that's a big differentiator in terms of in my industry is are you responsive? Are you responsible? Are you gonna just do the right thing? Even if it means you kind of take it in the shorts a little bit every now and then, it's okay. You gotta do the right thing. I think that's a big differentiator in my world. Now, from the other side of it, when you look at solar installers, for example, it's such a hot mess. We were talking about how immature the industry is. Those that are out there that I've got a friend of mine who owns a solar company just east of San Francisco, and he knows how to read spreadsheets, do budgets, do job cost analysis. He's a true businessman. I mean, he really, really runs a well-run company because he knows what he's doing. That's going to differentiate. That's why he's been in business for 17 years and probably still will be, right? Whereas a lot of solar companies coming up. So from the solar installer side of the business, those that make it are those that actually have someone on board who knows what the heck he's doing or she's doing, right? And a lot of them do not. And so that's why you're seeing a lot of solar companies fold right now. So those are two different uh industries, right? I'm not the installer, but I do know what they need to work.

unknown 37:03

Right.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

I'm a targeter, and I know what they need to work too. Good relationships, right? Yeah, that sounds so lame. I get it. That's what it's true.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 37:12

Hope it's true. It's true. Now you've you've built companies, fix companies, and helped scale teams repeatedly. What is different about building your own company versus helping someone else grow theirs?

SPEAKER_00 37:24

I don't have a security blanket. There is no safety net. That's it, right? When you're you're brought on board as a I don't know, managing director or whatever company, whether it's temporary or permanent, whatever, yeah, you probably have a nice cushy-based salary, right? You've got a comfort zone. You can make mistakes. Uh, you'll still have a job next week. Um, when you're doing your own thing, as I am, uh there is no safety net. So I think the majority of people are probably too risk-averse to uh do this, which I can tell you that my ex-spouse is definitely in that camp or did not like the level of stress I'm willing to take.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 38:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

Um, because I'm okay operating in that gray zone where there is no certainty. That's the big thing. You have to do this, you're gonna have to be brave. Bravery.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 38:12

A lot of risk, but on the other side, flip side, the potential for great rewards as well.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

That's correct. I've enjoyed some rewards too, yes. Yeah.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 38:20

And then there's, I mean, what I love is like the flexibility. I can set my own schedule. I have the um, I can be creative in what I focus on and you know how I can make diversify.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

And it's gonna hurt, but I'm also gonna learn from it. And then from what I just learned, I'm going to make more money from it.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 38:36

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

And it's just that willingness to accept risk and the freedom of it. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. It's definitely not for everybody. Not for everybody. Trust me, my mom's been telling me for 20 years, Andrew, I wish you would just go get a real job. Right, right.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 38:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

Look, mom, I'm must not be. You gotta know me by now.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 38:57

Now you've emphasized the power of relationships, phone calls, and real networking in a world that often defaults to automation and text-based communication. Why do you think that human connection still matters so much in business development?

SPEAKER_00 39:10

It's kind of like what I was just saying a minute ago. Meaning, if something goes wrong, and it will, it just will, you're gonna get the wrong product, not shipped to the right place, shipped to the wrong time. They didn't give you as much as you had ordered, and you got a whole crew on a job site and everything's going sideways on something. You need to be able to call somebody and talk to them. And you need to have faith that they're gonna pick up the phone and solve your problem, right? Um, I'll not call out the distributor that used to always insist that this is back when I was running a solar company, everything had to be delivered straight to the job site. And we'll call it 15% of the time. I got the wrong materials, not delivered to the right place, not delivered at the wrong time. There was always a problem. Right. All I could do was text somebody for resolution. Oh my good lord, I've got seven guys on a job site. I'm paying right now, right? I need a resolution right now. I'm not emailing you for resolution. Exactly. Right? That's why it's important. So when you're doing business development, it's the same thing. Uh, if I let's say I was a sales guy, which obviously I used to be, uh, why would you buy from me? Probably because you know, I don't sound pushy or salesy, and you can always get me on the phone. Uh yeah, kind of always. Um that's what people buy. It's not because I had a really cute marketing funnel on Facebook or I auto-responded or auto-texted, or nothing wrong with drip campaigns. I get it, they have their place. But no one's uh no one's gonna build, you know, buy long term from you or work with you in a long term on a larger scale to help you scale your business if you're solely reliant on that. That also speaks to a generational thing. I recognize I'm obviously in my 50s where I grew up in a world where yeah, you call people and you talk to them on the phone. Uh, whereas a lot of the employees I've had that are three decades younger, they don't call you. Everything has got to be an email or a text. I don't know if they're afraid of the phone. They didn't know that building relationship. I'm not sure what the generational gap is, but it's a real business problem. I've had this conversation with many of my friends for many, many years. Yeah, what a failure.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 41:10

Yeah, it is. And no, you're right. It is a oh man. Yeah, yeah. Where we used to fight for the phone, right? To get a chance to call our friends or whatever. And now they're like, I'm not gonna call you. I'm gonna Snapchat you or you know, text you or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 41:25

Hey, well, if it's something simple like pick up milk on the way home, send me a text. That's fine.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 41:29

Sure, sure, right. Yeah, or if you're in a meeting, don't want to be interrupted or some it's not time sensitive, right? But yeah, yeah. Yeah, that phone call and relationships and just I mean, I mean, it's cultivating trust, you know, I think. And and uh yeah. So final question, Andrew, as you look ahead, what's your broader vision for Green Raven? And what advice would you give to entrepreneurs or commercial energy leaders trying to build something meaningful in a fast changing market?

SPEAKER_00 41:58

Be informed. Honestly, that's the so much. That's like such a vague answer I know. Obviously, today's world is all about tax credits and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I know everything I could possibly get my hands on because this is what I do when I'm not actively working, is I'm reading about fiat compliance and whatever tax situations and what manufacturers and how the components work. And I need to be informed. So that'd be one learn your market, whatever your industry is, learn it inside and out. Uh, gather data. I mean, for God's sake, if you're an installer, job cost analysis matters. It just does. You need to know where the holes in the boat are. If you're not doing job cost analysis, you have no idea. You're just guessing. I've seen that a ton of times, and I don't get it. Gather data points, make decisions based on data. And if you don't know how to, then hire someone who does. That's probably the best staying that's part of staying informed.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 42:55

Be informed. Right, right. Data start knowing your numbers, exactly. Yeah, and be informed. That's great advice. Andrew, thank you for joining me. How can listeners learn more about you and Green Raven?

SPEAKER_00 43:07

Well, obviously, anyone could go to our website, which is just go greenraven.com. There's tons of info on the company. Uh, obviously, you can schedule a call with me. I was probably one of the very first LinkedIn users, well, actually, I was ever. Wow. So I'm very easy to find on LinkedIn, except I talk to almost everybody. It's one of my mentors told me a long time ago accept a call from anybody. You never know where it's going to lead you. And I do. So anyone could reach out anytime.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 43:33

All right. Well, thank you. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in to Industry Ignited. Be sure to subscribe and join us for the next episode. Until next time, stay bold, stay curious, and keep igniting industry.