The Future of Solar: Insights from Arch Solar
About this episode
Mike Cornell, Chief Instigation Officer at Arch Solar, brings the heat in this episode—talking growth, grit, and how they’re gunning for $100M by 2033. He dives into everything from building a rock-solid ops structure to the real work behind attracting more women into solar, plus a few hard lessons learned along the way. Oh, and if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to meet Elon Musk, run O&M like a pro, or use driver-facing cameras to lower insurance costs—Mike’s got stories for days!
Transcript
I will say that our business is stronger than it has ever been. The success of growth and where I see companies growing consistently really is your people. I mean, the story is not does it make power? Because they all make power. The story is what does it power?
Speaker 1:This is what solar installers need to know with your host Herve Billie and Joe Mahamati.
Speaker 2:Hi there. It's Herve and Joe in what solar installers need to know, where we interview solar CEOs and experts on how they run their business on the solar cluster. We ask their private revenue numbers. We give actionable advice and learn about trade secrets so you can run and grow your solar business. Joe and I built a solar company from 0 to 12,000,000 sales and got successfully acquired.
Speaker 2:If you'd like to do the same or do better, go to sungo.com/blog to get actionable behind the scenes lessons on running and growing your solar business. And now without further ado, let's jump right into the next episode. Welcome to what solar installers need to know, where we learn from other solar installers and experts about what works and what doesn't. We help you run your solar business, innovate, and discuss the future of solar. Welcome, Mike, to the podcast.
Speaker 1:Hey, everybody. Good to see you.
Speaker 2:So, Mike, you had a full career before going into solar. You worked at Harley Davidson. You worked at Mazda, and now you're the CIO at Arch Solar, which is part of Amicus. Arch Solar, if you correct me, is 18,000,000 in revenue, both resi and commercial together. So around a 170 employees total, 30 people in resi, 40 in in commercial, and around 90 in utility space.
Speaker 2:You also have around 10 people focusing on o and m. You operate mainly Wisconsin. Utility branch is also operating in Illinois. You have around 15 to 18 installs a month. 25% of your resi have a battery attachment, and you have three crews residential, three crews C and I, and including your utility scale, you do a 100% of the labor in house.
Speaker 1:That's a very nice bio, Urbe. Thank you.
Speaker 2:So let's start with two questions. What does COO stands for, and what is Amicus?
Speaker 1:You want CIO first? So CIO is my self proclaimed title. I'm the chief instigation officer. I started out with Ed ten years ago as a energy consultant, and then I took over all of our marketing, and then I was very involved in operations. And I just decided that, you know what?
Speaker 1:I have to continue to instigate in order to grow this company. So one instigation after another, getting our fleet number for our vehicles so that we'd save $12,000 on a van, etcetera, etcetera. I just became an instigator. And we all agreed a couple years ago. That's a great title for me, so that's it stuck.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Alright. And what is Amicus?
Speaker 1:So Amicus is is a blessing to us. Amicus is a cooperative of solar contractors around the country. We have some Canadians as well, and then we have Hector over in Puerto Rico of high value, conscientious, honest contractors, and then we're also a purchasing coop. So we aggregate and try to help everybody get a better price by aggregating our purchases. What it really is is a brotherhood and sisterhood of really good people in this industry, which is not still not a very well known industry.
Speaker 1:I mean, when you talk to people, I'm in solar, maybe one in 500 people you can relate to. Most people talk to me, they're like, solar, what's that? But Amicus is a leader in that. They've been in engaged in this process since 2012, and we're really proud to be members of. We remember number 34, and that was quite a while ago.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, Amicus is a resource for, you know, for all of its members to be able to share information, share practices, best practices, policy, HR, you know, personnel, wages, all of that stuff. And, yeah, we're really, really grateful for our membership in Amicus, and we're also members of Amicus o and m, has also been a benefit to us. I would I would highly recommend if you're not an Amicus member and you wanna be, you can, you know, try to be, and, you know, we would all welcome good members. I mean, you know as well as I do, everybody, there's not a bad person in the group. Right?
Speaker 1:It's, it's it's really been a neat thing. It's a peer group as well. Right? So it's national. So, you know, I can call Lars on in California.
Speaker 1:I can call James in Vermont. I can call Chris in Tennessee. I can call Barry in Florida. You know, if they've been through something I haven't gone through, they can give me all the tips and the watch outs and the stuff that makes us, you know, very successful.
Speaker 2:Let's get together. I was sitting next to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's wonderful just stepping in a room with a lot of other people that have to make similar decisions as you as you do. So they feel the pain, they've walked to talk, they know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yep. Yep.
Speaker 2:Well, about about the walk, let's speak about the vision, long term vision of the company. You have something of a b hack, a big audacious goal?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Big, very audacious goal. So we have an annual meeting and our owner, Ed, lives on a farm and he's got an 18 acre farm with a really nice barn that he's fixed up. And so we take all of our staff out there and we go sit in this barn for a day and we have our leadership summit. And at the end of the day, Ed gets his opportunity to speak.
Speaker 1:And so two years ago, I said, okay, Ed, what are you gonna talk about? He goes, oh, I don't I only got one slide. So he gets in the front of the room with 25 people and he puts up a slide and it says 100,000,000 by 2033. So that's his vision for his company to grow to that size of a revenue company. There are some really neat metrics that go along with that, and friends like Kevin Schulte in New York have shared stuff with us that have given us a basis for this foundation.
Speaker 1:But there's a human capital component to a 100,000,000. You just don't get a $100,000,000 job with and 10 people are gonna pull it off. So we're we have planned and we're we're strategizing and we're hiring the right people, especially in the human re human capital side to reach about 350,000 in in our total human capital population. So and our goal is to provide good paying, you know, safe jobs where people are proud of doing what they're doing. And we've got one of the things that's really neat about and I'm I'm going off on a tangent here, but one of the things that's really neat about our staff, I think, is that we have about 30 women in different areas of leadership and construction.
Speaker 2:But how difficult is it to attract the women?
Speaker 1:So it's really interesting. So in the admin side of things, we had a couple of ladies. And then in the sales side, I had a lady, and she's now our director of sales in Resy. And we had I had a number of people we over the course of years, we've had a number of people that said, hey. I'm taking the MREA course.
Speaker 1:I'm taking the NABCEP course. I'm I'm going to tech school. Would you guys consider hiring me? And we were like, sure. I mean, why not?
Speaker 1:Right? And so we have one person that I'm super proud of. She's the only female NABCEF certified installer in the country. She's a journeyman electrician and she's a NABCEF trainer. And she works in the field for us.
Speaker 1:And she's she runs her own crew on the AC side. Jennifer Conraddy, she's just wonderful. And she might talk to somebody in fact, she goes out to she does outreach seminars for us as well, and so from that, we have another person named Samantha who's running what is she running now? Residential operations, I think. So, yeah, it's it's wonderful.
Speaker 1:And we have some people in the field. We have one gal whose name is Samantha. She's from Texas. She's working in Arch Electric as an electrician, and her husband is also working next to her. So the two of them get to work together every day out in the field doing electrical work.
Speaker 1:It's really kind of fun watching them. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Let's talk for a moment about difficult moments in the company. You explained that you have several difficult difficulties throughout the years, but let's speak about, like, one of those hard moments that that you guys had to push through.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So so I was I joined in August 2015, and at that time, I was the only energy I was the only revenue generator. There was nobody else generating revenue, so I it was up to me. And at that time, I mean, I would be driving in my car with my laptop and my passenger seat, entering in data into our software program on my way to an appointment to present the the proposal. And in fact, I would get to the customer's house sometimes, and I would use their printer because we I didn't have a portable printer.
Speaker 1:We couldn't afford it. And that was when we were about nine people. And so it was just an eighty hour a week struggle. We just kept working, working, working, and struggling, and we were able to kinda move along pretty good, and, you know, we went from, like, nine people to 15 people to 20 people, and then an opportunity came along that that I personally said we have to walk away from. And Ed said, oh, no.
Speaker 1:We're gonna do this, and that would have been a that would be a 1.8 megawatt roof job, two roofs actually, on the South Side Of Milwaukee for IKEA. And in the wintertime and I said to Ed, I said, how are we gonna do this? And he goes, oh, don't worry. It's just another cliff. In other words, know, and hope you land.
Speaker 1:We ended up having all hands on deck for that job. We even had resi guys up the resi people up there at the time. I don't know if we had any gals up there at the time. But we in the wintertime, in 24 inches of snow, 28 inches of snow one day, we were able to pull that thing off on time within budget, and we actually got a safety award and a construction award from REC Solar for it. Once we got over that hurdle, it was kinda like, hey, looks like we can probably do anything.
Speaker 1:And then anything came along, and that is the utility business. We had a developer approach us and say, you you guys can build this for us, or you guys are so good. You can just do this on your own if you figure it out. Well, figuring it out probably took about $5,000,000 worth of tuition, maybe more, and that was several years ago. And now we're building, you know I think this year, we're building 45 or 50 megawatts in utility.
Speaker 1:And it's a completely vertical seamless operation. We've got a general manager running the business, and he and his staff and their accounting and everything, they're all independent. They just do their thing.
Speaker 2:So if it wasn't for that one restaking project, you wouldn't be where you are today?
Speaker 1:I mean, no. Not where we are today. Where we are maybe three years ago, we would have been, but no. Not today. Today I mean, today we are now at the luxury of having to choose which developers we work for, and we don't respond to every RFP that comes through because we don't need to.
Speaker 1:And so it's kind of a luxury. And I'm not saying that, you know, we're so good that nobody can touch us. It's just that we we have found some very good business partners and they have promised us and we've been working together with them for years, you know, a good future. So we are now talking about projects in 2028 in excess of what we're gonna do this year for utility.
Speaker 2:What what makes a good business partner? If you can select them, what are some some things you guys look for?
Speaker 1:Basically, if their word is their bond, you know. I have an old saying from my my career, no assholes and no bullshit. And when I'm dealing with these guys and I'm getting the straight scoop, and even when we have problems, if they're being straight with us and we're you know, we work the problems out, we love it. And I'm not involved in that business anymore. Dan Steiner takes care of all that, But and that's totally a utility thing.
Speaker 1:So about three years ago, we restructured the company. It used to be one company called Arch Electric, and it occurred to me and our CFO that this thing is gonna get out of control if we don't kinda put some parameters. I don't wanna say silos. I don't like the word division. So we came up with a business unit plan where we would establish Resy and put them on their own with their own crews, their own general manager, own accounting, their own line of credit, their own insurance.
Speaker 1:And then we did the same thing for c and I. We did the same thing for o and m, even though o and m is very small. And then we did the same thing for Arch Electric, and we found a very strong individual that came to us from the industry to run Arch Electric. So that business unit is essentially carrying, you know, a lot of the I mean, they're making the most money, right, because the margins and the the volume. But they help support the rest of the companies from the standpoint of over management fees.
Speaker 1:We have management fees and overhead. And so it works really good in so far as not having to under to wonder who's gonna fix and who's gonna do what. When a residential job has to get done, it's the residential people, and they handle everything that has to do with it. Procurement, paying in the bill, permitting, all that stuff. If it's a commercial job, residential people don't touch it.
Speaker 1:It all goes to the commercial people. And and then o and m is independent. Business unit has its own o and m. So they call it service quality maintenance. So Resy has this one, three s q m people.
Speaker 1:C and I has two s q m's and then our o n s services, both Arch Electric in the utility field and then all of our other developer partners.
Speaker 2:Do you have something in common? All the vehicles, are they purchased in common or do do the department charge short and so on?
Speaker 1:So so we have four business units, but we have eight companies. And so we established a company called Arch Leasing, and so Arch Leasing buys all the equipment, even the post pounders and the trenchers and the bobcats and everything. Arch Leasing buys that, and then they rent it to the business unit. For example, if c and I needs a bobcat for a day, we have an hourly rate for that with an operator, and the bobcat goes and, you know, makes a trench for them maybe, let's say, And, you know, and then when it's ready, it gets backfilled, he comes back and then there's a fee for that and they pay that. And it's all part of the estimate.
Speaker 1:Arch Arch Fleet is our vehicles. I think that's a different one. Right? No. Arch Leasing and then Arch Arch Transportation, that's our vehicles.
Speaker 1:So we buy the vehicles under Arch Leasing and then we lease them to every business unit with a depreciation schedule. And that way, the business unit doesn't have to cough up the $60.70 grand for to buy a vehicle. They can go basically with no money down and borrow or I'm sorry, make monthly payments.
Speaker 2:Who does the maintenance on the vehicles? Like, we went to, like, so many vehicles and it was always a problem about keeping all the vehicles on the road. There was there's always maintenance and some accidents. Yeah. Who's taking care of all that?
Speaker 1:So we have an asset manager, we call him. So he takes care of the forklift in the warehouse. He takes care of maintaining the maintenance on all of the vehicles, and he knows when a when a vehicle needs an oil change or a vehicle needs tires or brakes or whatever, he's one point of contact. So he tells the driver of the vehicle, you know, take it over to this place and they're gonna change the oil. And then that place calls and says, oh, you also need some transmission, you need some brakes, whatever.
Speaker 1:Josh makes that decision and and then he pays the bill. And then the driver gets his truck back and everything's wonderful. And all the way down to wiper blades.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow. But What about cameras? What about cameras in the vehicles and how did you got get by and how did you launch the the the that project? Because a lot of solar companies think about putting cameras in the vehicles, but then convincing having the conversations with the drivers is is difficult. How did you guys manage that?
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's a good question. So in conversations with our insurance company and other, you know, fleet managers understand that I was in the car business for a long time, so I've dealt with this stuff before. We could get a reduction in our insurance by having security in our vehicles. So we we put on a monitoring system, and we put cameras in the vehicles that are basically by the rearview mirror.
Speaker 1:There was a little pushback, you know, big brother and all that stuff, but we now know the camera is focused on the eyes of the driver, and we now know, you know, whether or not that driver is paying attention or not in case of an accident. And as a matter of fact, we had an accident about four months ago three three weeks ago where one of our drivers got t boned, and he had looked both ways. You can see it on the camera, and he pulled out, and the driver that came and hit him was negligent. But the cops were gonna give a ticket to our employee, and when we produced the video of the camera, they saw that our employee had looked both ways and had proceeded, and out of nowhere comes this pickup truck and t bones them. And we totaled the truck got totaled as well.
Speaker 1:So that and the insurance company paid out right away. They said, hey. You know, this is not on you guys. So and I think it also helps with the honesty of the of the individual. He really don't want anybody smoking weed and then driving home.
Speaker 1:It's not safe. We don't want people, you know, popping a a six pack on the way home. Again, it's not safe. So and we don't care what they do, you know, on their own time. But these vehicles are expensive.
Speaker 1:They're dangerous. They're they're loaded with tools and equipment. I mean, they're missiles. Right? And so we wanna make sure that everybody's safe.
Speaker 1:Safety is like a big deal. It is the number one deal for us. But, yeah, Josh has got a full time Josh. He job. He's he's managing all of the equipment.
Speaker 1:So there's probably I think we got eight trailers, let's just say, four or five skid steers. It's all utility stuff. And I think the last con I had was 33 trucks and vans. So he does a great job, but we haven't had, you know, we we haven't had a tire blowout. We haven't had a burned up engine.
Speaker 1:We haven't had a you know, if we have a cracked windshield, he gets that fixed right away. So but it didn't come you know, it it's like everything else. It doesn't come easy. It took us a long time to get there.
Speaker 2:Since we talk about vehicles, you had a career at Harley Davidson and Mazda. Is there some lesson that you learned in that type of industry that is useful in the solar industry, or any advice that you would give?
Speaker 1:Well, my my experience in, you know, Harley, Ford, GM, Mazda was customer service. I learned a lot about how customers how important customer service is. And one of the things I I know I bring to the company is that vigilant that vigilance on what we call the white glove treatment, you know. Everything we do, I look at it from the customer's perspective because that's what I've learned in my career to understand, you know, we think we did a nice job trenching in the yard and covering it back up, but the customer looks at that mound in their yard and they go, is there somebody gonna rake that up or am I gonna rake it up? If I'm rake it up, how come I'm paying you guys, you know?
Speaker 1:So that kind of thing, white glove treatment, And also dealing even with you know, in the commercial field, we end up dealing with other contractors. You know, we might work for a GC on a new construction. And so respect is another thing that I've learned over the years. You know, just because we might be the best at what we do in the area doesn't mean we should start, you know, pounding our chest and telling people which way the wind blows. We should be we need to listen with both ears and talk out of one.
Speaker 1:And that's that's one of my creatives. We you were born with two ears and one mouth. Use it that way.
Speaker 2:That's a good one. I'd like to speak about o and m. A lot of EPCs do a little bit of o and m. If they are mature enough, I think they split off and have dedicated people and personnel on O and M. But it's still, questionable about is it making money?
Speaker 2:Can you survive in it? What are some of the margins that you can have on O and M? So can you speak about how you how your o and m department or business unit works and and the benefits?
Speaker 1:Today, it works a lot different than it did five or six or seven years ago. There's a there's a funny story for those of you that are thinking about it. When Amicus announced that they were having an o and m co op, an addition to the regular o and m, I was sitting next to our owner, Ed, who's you should look him up on archsolar.com. He's a robust person, let's just say that. He he can take me in an arm wrestle.
Speaker 1:But they announced that we're gonna do this o and m and that what the fee was gonna be, and Kevin Schulte raised his hand and said, I'm in. And the next person that did it was the guy next to me, and I'm holding his arm, and I'm like, pull that down. You owe 8, like, $10. And so he Ed saw the vision Ed's a very visionary person, and he saw the opportunity that all of these systems all over North America, at some point, are gonna need something. They're gonna break.
Speaker 1:There's gonna be a wire. There's gonna be a fire. There's gonna be something. And so we had one guy that was running a he had worked with Ed at another when Ed used to be an electrician wiring industrial buildings. And he had known this guy and we I he and I met and Ed met years ago.
Speaker 1:We said, Eric, you can have your own little business here just fixing stuff. And we were very very fortunate to secure a contract with a major inverter manufacturer located in well, they're Spanish, but they're located in they're North American, it's located in Milwaukee and Chicago. And so we established a relationship with them, and from that, Eric and another person ended up getting on a plane just about every morning going somewhere USA to fix either a wind or a storage or an in a solar inverter for Inga team, and we're still doing that today. Today, we have now two dedicated people. That's all they do.
Speaker 1:And Eric and the rest of the team, we've we and propagated customers. Some of the sites that are built here in Wisconsin, they we know who the who the owners are, and so we go and meet with the owners and say, hey. We can do this O and M for you. And one of the things about O and M that's very difficult, and it's getting easier because it requires a reputation, but people don't know that we perform o and m unless we tell them because our name says solar, doesn't say o and m, which is why we created the business unit with the name o n and it's now it's think I think we have three admin people. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We have three admin people and six or seven techs. And two of them are women, by the way. One of them let's see. I think she's a journeyman. I have not yet met her, Sarah, but I think she's a journeyman electrician.
Speaker 1:Another one of them is an electrical engineer. And so and they go out and they find some crazy shit, man. I mean, you know, they'll open up an inverter and they'll see a beehive, and the bees got in there and, you know, melted, and now you got melted honey all over the place, and how are you gonna clean that up? Right? Other things they see is rodents.
Speaker 1:Right? Rodents. I mean, we've I've seen so many pictures of fried mice. It's ridiculous. It's not an easy business, so I don't wanna misconstrue that.
Speaker 1:It took us I would say we probably invested several $100,000 before we got profitable. And what we also realized is that the margins can be in the 60% neighborhood because it's service. It's not you're not quoting a job. You're not competing with somebody on how much you're gonna build it for. It's service.
Speaker 1:And and most of the people, these asset owners, they want one stop. They just wanna make a call and say, you get out there and fix it? Send me the bill. And so we've realized that that's really the the success of o and m. Our forecast for o and m, interestingly, is that at some point, we see resi solar plateauing, CNI doing somewhat the same, but in the meantime, there's all this stuff that's operating and it has to be cared for.
Speaker 1:So we're even thinking about, and one of the Amicus members does this already, we're even thinking about changing the name to the care department.
Speaker 2:Nice. Now you speak the mainly about c and I and and utility o and m. What about residential o and m?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we have we have two people in residential. We call it SQMs, service quality management. And so if we have we are and we're monitoring all of our sites. We now have, I think I don't wanna say it.
Speaker 1:I think there's about a little over 2,000 2,300 sites. And so on the monitoring platform, we get alerts. And so when these guys see an alert, they'll look at the customer's site and they'll go and double check the communication and the software and so on and so forth, and if they can't fix it with communication, then there is maybe a real issue, we'll contact the customer, we'll say, hey, we gotta come and fix this thing, you know, we have a trip charge and we have a service charge, do you want us to do it? And of course, they do that. We have not gotten to the point yet of I don't know about this for sure.
Speaker 1:I think in residential, we offer a service warranty for the first year or five, which is probably an additional $250 or maybe $500, I don't know. In C and I, we have talked about the same thing, but because we haven't had many problems on anything that we've installed, don't really it's not an initiative for us. On the other hand, when we get called for the other stuff that's been installed by others, we just had a huge project at a Kohl's that was just horribly installed. And then they call us and they say, hey. The guys that put this in are out of business.
Speaker 1:Can you guys come and fix this for us? And that's really the future of o and m. If there's 20 contractors in Wisconsin now, there will probably be, you know, six that are gonna be around in ten years, maybe. And we'll be able to fix all of that stuff.
Speaker 2:How do you charge, like, pricing wise for for c nine? Is it like?
Speaker 1:So here in our market yeah. Good question. In our market here, we charge a $125 for what's called reactive maintenance and preventative maintenance. I'm gonna tell you this. I'm not a 100% exactly sure about this, but I heard we charge around a 110 on preventative maintenance.
Speaker 1:And that's across the board no matter what the business unit is.
Speaker 2:Do you have some surcharges?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Good question. So if we just had this happen a couple boy, I think it was a week ago. We had a commercial job that was I wanna say it was 30 maybe stories high that we built with the general contractor, and it was a high profile building down in Downtown Milwaukee.
Speaker 1:And they called called and and I'm trying to think what happened, why the panels broke. Three panels got damaged, and they called at 07:00 in the morning, and they said, we want this fixed today. And so in that case, our $1.25 an hour becomes a $2.50 trip charge and then a $125 an hour. And one of the things I would encourage you to do if you're gonna do when you're doing o and m is try to capture every minute because if it's not just the truck roll, it's the loading of the truck, it's the taking the phone call, it's creating the job ticket, and then at the end, it's unloading the truck and doing the admin and producing the invoice. So there's another hour, hour and a half there of labor that needs to be captured at two at a 125 an hour.
Speaker 1:That's one of my jobs. So I instigate education. Right? I'm trying to get people to understand that a truck roll is a truck roll, but there's stuff on the other side of it. So you can't the myopia that we tend to have on on our billing systems is is something that all of you can probably understand because, you know, you own your businesses and you've paid those bills.
Speaker 1:Surcharge is something that not we're not trying to gouge anybody, what we're doing is we're postponing the business that we had on the schedule for the last two weeks. And so now we now we have to make four phone calls and say, hey. I I'm sorry. I can't come today. Something came up.
Speaker 1:I'll have to come tomorrow. And so there's a value to that that I believe that we were eligible to collect for.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's an opportunity cost. It's a real cost. Mike, I'd like to end the podcast as I know you met Elon Musk in person a while ago. What would you say to Elon Musk if you would meet him again today?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So in May 2009, I got a call from an old friend of mine at Harley, and he said, hey. Tesla needs a North American sales manager. Would you be interested? And I'm like, hell, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, I love electric cars, and I've been around cars my whole life. So this guy gets a hold of me, and we were making arrangements to go out to LA to meet meet. And there was a unveiling of the s model in May '9, it was held at the rocket the Hawthorne Rocket Factory, SpaceX. And I didn't know SpaceX even existed back then. And so I go into this building and I got a VIP pass, so they let me run around anywhere I wanna go.
Speaker 1:And I went in the backstage and I got to see all the rocket stuff, man. It was crazy. And then the music started playing, and they had everybody with hors d'oeuvres and drinks and stuff, and now we're gonna unveil the s model. So they unveiled the s model, and and then Elon's walking around. First, gives his little talk, you know, he gives a little talk.
Speaker 1:And then he's wandering around, and this gal, I think her name was Denise, says, hey, Mike. Would you like to meet Elon? I said, yes, please. So I got to meet him, and I'm like, hi. My name's Mike.
Speaker 1:That time, I was wearing a General Motors Indicia on a dark shirt that was basically black on black embossment. And I said, I'll I'm probably the only person from this place that you're gonna meet tonight. And he said, that's very interesting. And I said, you know, I'm really excited about what you what you're doing. I can't wait for the future.
Speaker 1:Someday there will be a semi. And his response was, who told you about that? So he already back in o nine is I mean, his product mind is is amazing. Right? What I would say to him today is or or what he would have said to me today that he said that it would be the same thing.
Speaker 1:Photovoltaic and electric vehicles equals sustainable transportation. I don't think anything's changed. I mean, I just watched their all in meeting from five days ago where he had the entire staff and he it was just him talking transparently, talking about all the products that they're working on and what they're gonna be doing, and they showed the semi factory to the public for the first time. That's a real thing. I mean, a lot of people are like, yeah, those electric cars, you know, the batteries are gonna die.
Speaker 1:They're gonna start on fire, blah blah blah blah. I mean, we have five, I think, six Teslas at the company between and and these are privately owned. These are not company cars. The guys just buy them, and and we have five chargers, four chargers, I think. And yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm a musketeer, you know, through and through. Say say what you want about his personal life. I mean, everybody's got one. I mean, don't know anybody. There's got more kids than this guy.
Speaker 1:But his brain, rockets and making electric cars and making self driving autonomous, you know, artificial intelligence. My goodness. We're blessed to have, you know, somebody the likes of Edison on our team team in America.
Speaker 2:And on those wise words, Mike, I wanna thank you very much for the podcast. Hopefully, we all learned something more. So thank you for sharing. If you'd like to do the same or do better, go to sunvoy.com/blog and get actionable behind the scenes lessons on running and growing your solar business.