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Collaboration Over Competition, from ReVision Energy CEO
Episode 16

Collaboration Over Competition, from ReVision Energy CEO

About this episode

Fortunat Mueller, co-founder of Revision Energy, gets into what it really means to build a mission-driven solar company that’s in it for the long haul. He talks employee ownership, growing beyond just solar, and how EVs are becoming a key part of their operations. From lessons learned the hard way to smart acquisitions that actually make sense, Fortunat lays out what it takes to scale with purpose in today’s solar landscape.

Transcript

Intro:

I will say that our business is stronger than it has ever been.

Fortunat:

The success of growth and where I see companies growing consistently really is your people.

Intro:

I mean, the story is not does it make power? Because they all make power. The story is what does it power?

Fortunat:

This is what solar installers need to know with your host Herve Billie and Joe Marhamati.

Hervé:

Hi there. It's Herve and Joe Lourdes, 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.

Hervé:

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. Hey, Fortunat welcome to the podcast about what solar installers need to know.

Fortunat:

Thanks. It's great to be here.

Hervé:

Fortunat, we know each other for many years, and you've been running Revision Energy for how many years now?

Fortunat:

Revision started in 02/2003, so we're twenty two years old.

Hervé:

Congrats. Congrats. With Vision Energy, for the people that don't have haven't heard about you yet, Revision Energy is doing around 140,000,000 in revenue last year. You operate in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Vermont. You have around 420 employees, around 200 to 240 residential installs a month, around 10 projects commercial projects a month, and you have around 25 crews split around the company to install all of that.

Hervé:

And all the residential installations are already done in house. The commercial projects really depends sometimes. Most in in house, sometimes with outsourced labor. But more importantly, talking about all that hard work after so many years of being in charge, you also took a sabbatical. Tell us more about that.

Hervé:

Why a sabbatical and how did that go?

Fortunat:

Yeah. I've just just been back at work for a month after a year long sabbatical, so I'm getting back in the habit. You know, when my wife and I actually, before we were married, my wife and I agreed that if we ever had kids and when we had kids, we would try to take the opportunity sometime in our careers to go show them the world. We we currently live in Maine, which is an amazing place to live, really an awesome place to live and raise a family. But we wanna make sure that our children understand that Maine is not the whole world.

Fortunat:

And so this past year when our kids were in seventh and eighth grade, we thought it was a good time. They're old enough to be independent and appreciate it, young enough that missing a year of school is not that big a deal. And so we took we took a year to travel around the world and get some different perspectives and and also, frankly, to rest and recharge, which is pretty important.

Hervé:

Which different places do you see? Where did you live, and where did your kids go to school?

Fortunat:

Yeah. We spent the fall last year in Tanzania in East Africa in the city of Oyvarusha, and our kids went to an international school there and had a really amazing experience at that school there. And then in the spring, we traveled extensively first in Africa, then through Europe, and we homeschooled for the spring semester, for better or for worse. And we, you know, tried not to move around all that quickly, but we sort of spent a couple of weeks in most places and tried to experience a bunch of different places.

Hervé:

Wow. If that's so important and you were able to do it, Paul, with the help of your colleagues at Revision. So what had to be put in place for you to be able to do that? Basically, if other solar CEOs listen to this podcast or or solar auto managers that say, like, I would like that too, where'd you get started? How do you prepare for something like that?

Fortunat:

Yeah. I mean, I think really importantly, the revision converted to employee ownership back in 02/2017. We myself and my business partners, four of us, sold the business to the employees back in 02/2017, which began the transition of both the ownership of the business and the leadership of the business from the four of us to a much broader group. Two of my original cofounders are now either retired or partly retired, and the other two of us are still active in the business. But we have built in both before and since that time a really great senior leadership team that feels, I'm happy to report, just as committed to the success of the business as the founders, which is a really hard thing to do.

Fortunat:

I mean, as you know, at that level of buying and commitment for a business, you know, the way that a founder or an owner of a business feels is really special. And one of the things that I think is so powerful about employee ownership is the idea that you can get that, you know, ideally 420 deep. And, you know, we should be realistic. Not everybody is going to be as fully bought in and committed as the most. But certainly on your senior leadership team, you can get that level of buy in.

Fortunat:

That makes it possible for me to imagine being away for a year. I was really fully away from a year. I stayed on the board until I participated in sort of the strategic functions that our that our board and oversight functions that our board does, but I was really pretty substantially out of out of management and leadership day to day. And that was great for me personally, and I think it was also really good for revision as an organization. Lots of opportunities for people to step into different roles, for people to be in meetings where my voice is not for a change, which I'm sure was delightful for people, and to step up and figure stuff out.

Fortunat:

And so before I left, I thought this was gonna be true, and I think it is true today. I think Revision is a better company because of my sabbatical, and I'm delighted to come back and hopefully add something to the team that's been running the business for the last year.

Hervé:

So when you came back, it's like everything's running without you. Do you have a moment where, like, maybe maybe they are. I don't I don't need to come back. You had that moment?

Fortunat:

Yeah. Well, I mean, there are lots of things to do in solar company here in in mid twenty twenty five. You might you might know there's lots of challenges ahead of us collectively as an industry and individually as companies. So I think there's no shortage of sort of places where I can put my shoulder to the wheel and help. But it but it is really a unique opportunity.

Fortunat:

And I feel really blessed that I get to come back into this business and think where can I be most effective? What can I do that really helps move the needle? How should I show up differently In a way that just few people get to do, because especially in the role that you used to have and that I have had, you rarely get a chance to take a breath and pick your head up, right? You're sort of cranking from one reactive opportunity to another. And so it feels like a pretty special opportunity for myself and my sort of personal professional trajectory, but also for the company.

Hervé:

It is true that I feel like as soon as you can take your head of the fire pits and, like, the crazy stuff happening and you can actually take a step back and think, that's when you really move your company forward. That's when creativity comes in. That's when you place that call to a large partner, build a relationship that ends up a year later, like, a lot of contract, things like that. So when I had a management team and I could take a step back from the daily tasks, that's when the company grew. It's also when I was able to start SendVoice.

Hervé:

So I I guess the prediction is with the work you're doing now, like, clearly had that vision's gonna grow a lot then later on of the the new business development and new pieces that you put in place, I guess.

Fortunat:

Yeah. I think I think and I hope that's true. I will say that we don't measure our business success exclusively through how much we grow. I think that's a fool's errand. And especially for an employee owned company and for a B Corp, we try to measure our impact in a variety of ways.

Fortunat:

We would much rather get better than get bigger if we have to choose between the two. You know, there there are reasons to want to get bigger, not the least of which is that the world needs an awful lot of the things that we do, but not at the expense of of getting better because we have we also have a lot better to get at all the things we do.

Hervé:

Thank you for rectifying that. So that brings me to the next question about what do you think is happening in the solar industry? If you you had I think sometimes you think about it when you took a step back and now you're back in the game there. Like, what do you think is happening? What are some major trends you you see?

Fortunat:

Yeah. I mean, you know, we're recording in September 2025. And, obviously, the solar energy has just had sort of major disruption when it comes to federal policy. Right? And so everybody's trying to react to that and figure out what that means for their businesses and for the industry in general.

Fortunat:

It's also worth sort of backing up half a step and remembering that the solutions we provide for homeowners, for businesses, utilities, if that's if you work in that scale, are more necessary now than ever. And so though it feels like we went from having a pretty strong federal policy tailwinds a year, eighteen months ago to now. Not just headwinds, but really kind of like a level of deliberate chaos and insanity in terms of both trade policy and energy policy. It hasn't changed the fundamentals. The fundamentals are the sun comes up every day and washes the earth in free energy, and and our ability to harvest that energy is incredibly important if we wanna stay living on this planet.

Fortunat:

Right? That we are 6,000,000,000 people going going towards 10,000,000,000 people, and we cannot combust our way to prosperity. You can't have 10,000,000,000 people dumping the waste of their energy use into a closed atmosphere and expect to have a planet that any of us want to live on. And so the need for the work that we do is bigger than ever. And so it's easy to sort of get really overwhelmed by the near term policy stuff because we have to react to it because we need to stay in business and we need to continue to serve customers.

Fortunat:

It's not the macro trend. The macro trend that wind is still at our back. Solar's getting cheaper and better. Batteries are getting cheaper and better, and and we got a lot of work to do.

Hervé:

But a lot of work to do. And you also mentioned the quality, not the quantity. Thank you for correcting me on that one. What is one thing you'd like people to better understand about about Revision Energy?

Fortunat:

Well, one thing you didn't say in your intro that I always like to say is, you know, revision, we've always called ourselves an energy transition company rather than a solar company. And throughout history, the technologies that we have brought to customers to help them achieve a clean energy transition have varied. We actually you know, we like a lot of old school solar companies, we started in solar hot water business and transitioned to the off grid PV business to the PV business. And and today, we are providing residential customers with electrified heating solutions, electrified water heating solutions, electric vehicle charging, energy storage, as well as solar. And on the commercial side, some of those technologies as well, because for one, the same customers who need clean energy generation off the roof also need a way to heat and cool their homes without combusting fossil fuels.

Fortunat:

And so that's been a big part of who we are as a company, and I think it's going to be an even bigger part of who we are as a company going forward, the ability to serve customers more deeply and sort of join them in what is usually sort of a multi year, sometimes even decade long project of moving away from fossil fuels at every part of their lives is great. It gives you the opportunity to engage with customers more deeply and serve them better, which is both more fun and ultimately more profitable as well.

Hervé:

Let's take one example. I remember having a lot of conversations with you about HVAC when I wanted to start an HVAC part of of it. So how do you start those new departments? You mentioned EV charging charges batteries and heat pumps and interact. Is it customers that approach you and it's like, hey.

Hervé:

Here's a business need, or is it more like strategic? You kind of set something up, start selling it, seeing if there is a need. Like, how do those new technologies get a foothold and revision?

Fortunat:

Yeah. We typically, you know, as part of our annual strategic planning process, we we have sort of looked at the universe of things. We often use this hedgehog concept. I don't know if you're familiar with the hedgehog concept. I think Jim Collins popularized it in one of his books, and it talks about sort of thinking about the overlap of three circles, and I'm sure I'm gonna get this at least a little bit wrong.

Fortunat:

Forgive me. But they are sort of shorthand, hands, heart, and head, but they are the things that are consistent with your mission, your why, the things that you can be best in the world at, and the things you can make money at. And at the overlap of those three circles is the things you should consider doing. And so we have thought, well, our mission is to make life better by building a just and equitable electric future. Right?

Fortunat:

And so that defines the sort of scope of things we might consider doing. It means all the things that contribute to sort of electrifying our economy and improving the communities we live in. But we're not gonna do all of those things. Right? So what the things we're actually good at?

Fortunat:

We're good at mechanical contracting. We've been, you know, a plumbing shop and electrical shop. You know, we used to install boilers. And so we're in places where as wrench turners, we can make a difference and electrify the economy. So sort of installing other stuff makes sense.

Fortunat:

So we're, you know, we're generally not selling appliances. Right? We could sell induction stoves that fits our mission, but there's no there's no mechanical contracting work to do there. It doesn't fit our what are we best in the world that we're not the best retailer in the world. We do think we're the best sellers.

Fortunat:

Others may disagree, but we think we we think we're fighting chance. And and then, of course, the question probably the hardest question there today is is what can I make money at? Like, where where is the place where somebody's willing to pay me what it cost me to do this plus a little bit so I so I can keep growing my business? And that's the part that you kind of have to test. Right?

Fortunat:

So the way we do it when we pick up a new technology or a new strategic opportunity is to start slow. We typically do it in one of our geographies. We have six offices across three states, and know, we pick the one that feels best equipped either because of the market or because of the people who are there to sort of beta test. What it would what it look like to add heat pumps to to our solar projects. And we do a couple projects.

Fortunat:

We try to pick the customers carefully for those first couple projects because, you know, no matter how hard you work upfront, you're gonna make some mistakes, and you'd like a customer who understands that and is willing you know, if you take if you take good care of them, is willing to be on that journey with you. And then and then we make mistakes, fail, fix, repeat until we get good at it, or we decide we're not we shouldn't be in this business. And and there's a bunch of businesses we we have been in that we're no longer in. We used to install small wind. We're no longer in that business.

Fortunat:

We used to install commercial LED lighting retrofits. We're no longer in that business.

Hervé:

Why? Do you know do you know remember, like, sort of key reasons why you're not doing wind or electric LED?

Fortunat:

It's not small wind is not a business that scales well. It's incredibly site specific. And so what we found is that we could install three or four small wind turbines a year. And if we can only do three or four a year, it's crazy for us to try to do it. We like you know, if you can't set up a crew at a truck to do it every day, we can't get good at it.

Fortunat:

We can't get cheap enough at it. We can't get good at selling it. And so things that are sort of bespoke projects. And off grid is another one that we have moved away from and actually may someday move back to when it becomes a product that we can scale with. Grid the way it was eight, ten years ago, a bespoke project and it's great for people who do it and do it well, awesome, but it's not a business that is easy to grow.

Fortunat:

And for LEDs, what we found is that over time LEDs became the standard, right? And so once every electrician is putting in LEDs, the only projects that made sense for us to do is those where we were already doing, you know, solar and storage in the building. Most of our commercial work is not in new construction, and so we're not there when they're making the lighting choice in the first place. And so then the overlap with our customers got smaller and smaller once it became a mainstream product. You know, in the early days when when sort of the conventional electrician, you know, wouldn't or couldn't design and install LEDs, it made more sense for us to the today to stop making sense.

Fortunat:

And so so we have to be willing to, you know, be clear eyed and say, this was a good business for us five years ago. It's no longer a good business for us now. And for us, it's really important when we do that that we do that sort of with the with the people at the people in the first, our existing customers, but then also people in the organization in mind. And I was just thinking, you know, the the guy who joined Revision originally to start our LED lighting division is now one of our best small commercial sales people. You know, we said there's no way we're losing this guy when we when we move out of LEDs.

Fortunat:

He's great. He's he's a total mission fit. He's he's a skill fit. We're gonna find someplace else for him in the organization if he wants to stay, and he did, and he's been incredibly Thanks.

Hervé:

You also brought about making mistakes. Do you remember a mistake you make you made that you're not not gonna make again? But then also, do you see some solar other solar companies making mistakes that you feel like they should know better? So do you do you can you speak about a mistake from yourself, and what do you see others make as mistakes?

Fortunat:

Yeah. Do you mean me personally or or Revision as a group? Because I have I have lots of examples of both.

Hervé:

Whatever you feel comfortable with sharing.

Fortunat:

You know, one place where where revision has, I think, is in building our IT infrastructure. And this is probably not unique to us. Right? So we we have grown from a company of two people to 20 people to a 100 people to 200 people to 500 people, 400 people. And so we've replaced our IT systems over and over again, almost always a little bit too late and a little bit too cheap.

Fortunat:

And the result is that we feel like we are continually sort of running up against technical debt in our software stack that makes it harder to do the next thing. And it's really hard when you're running a business to stop and reset and move to a new system or whatever. It is almost impossible to do. Right? You're you're sort of proverbially building the plane as you're flying or, you know, you know, rivets in the plane as you're flying.

Fortunat:

And so that I think it's hard to do really well, and I would say it's a thing that we have not always done as well as well as I would like to. And I and I hope we have learned some lessons, and we get better at it over time. I think that's true, but I guess the the proof will be in the future.

Hervé:

And you not only grew, but you also acquired other companies. Right? So that comes all with that technical

Fortunat:

And and our business has grown in complexity too. Right? We used to we used to do a couple of different technologies for one kind of customer. Then we grew a commercial business that is very different. I mean, I I don't you know, we we built a fair bit over the last handful of years, a fair bit of sort of community scale solar, five, seven megawatts in scale, which is a very different business than residential.

Fortunat:

It's much longer time horizons, you know, very different sort of deal flows and money flows. There's a land acquisition piece. There's a project finance piece. There's a development and an engineering and interconnection piece. And so, you know, we're sort of building all the tools to do that over the top of our residential business tools, and that makes for sort of complex systems, and complex systems are challenging systems and are and and at times limit your flexibility.

Fortunat:

And so we're trying hard to think about what does it look like to to have a system that meets all our needs, but but sort of preserves flexibility and optionality in the future because we don't know. None of us know what our business will look like in in another four, ten years. And and in this time, I mean, in this short time, you know, with policy changes and other market changes, the ability to be flexible is feels pretty important for for a company to be successful.

Hervé:

And the mistake that you see other sole installers do or thinking maybe you're really well connected at Amicus, do you see some Amicus members struggling or or maybe non Amicus members that you kinda see? Like, how we Yeah.

Fortunat:

Mean a mistake I think the wholesale industry has made in The US, well not the wholesale industry but a big chunk of it, and we haven't seen so much of this in New England, maybe a little bit in Massachusetts, but the sort of rise of the third party seller and Redline model, I think, has really significantly degraded the reputation of solar in the world or in The US and degraded the quality of the product ultimately that we are to customers. Now, obviously, not every third party seller or every sort of Redline focused installer is the same, but I mean, there are enough of them doing enough damage to our collective brand that it really is problematic. And I would say it's not unrelated to some of the political challenges that we have in states or at the federal level. You know, if you are not taking good care of customers, you are not gonna have folks show up for you when when your back is to the wall. And so in general, I think mean, that's a kind of extreme example in in some ways.

Fortunat:

But I think in general, a mistake that I see a lot of companies and solar companies making is to undervalue how important it is to take really, really good care of customers. I think we learned that lesson really early because we started in Maine, which is a tiny little market, and you just cannot do bad work in Maine and survive. You have to take excellent care of people. I remember really, really vividly in that first handful of months in business, you know, running into one of our first couple of customers at the grocery store in the in the town I live in and thinking, man, I'm gonna be in this business. I really gotta take good care of people.

Fortunat:

I don't wanna have to be hiding when I go to the grocery store or when I go to my kids' baseball game or whatever. And I'd never been in a customer service business before. My background is in engineering. I was working in engineering organizations before, and it was definitely a light bulb moment for me saying, the way we take care of customers in our community is the most important thing, and it's and it's important sort of personally selfishly, but it's really important in terms of of how you build a durable business over time.

Hervé:

Yeah. That brings a message from, like, very clearly. Yeah. I I remember as a student I remember. I I I saw some posts about you as a student where you were working on electric cars.

Hervé:

And now I believe I saw a concert of revision with Ford f one fifty trucks powering that that concert. So now you have electric vehicles. So for those solar installers that that would like to have all the electric fleet or have Ford f one fifties to drive around, like, what do you recommend? Is it is it working out well? Like, maybe with some caveats?

Hervé:

Like, what's now that you have this Yeah. How how is it helping you?

Fortunat:

Like you said, electric vehicles is kinda my first love. I built an electric vehicle back in the late nineties and and drove a homemade electric vehicle for a decade while I was doing a lot of work. And and some of my first professional work was in the hydrogen fuel cell business, which is sort of a part of the electric vehicle business of a that that electricity comes from somewhere else. So I'm really I mean, I love that we now have really awesome, not homemade electric vehicles to buy. I've I've been driving a real electric vehicle, you know, for the last ten years or so, first, a Chevy Bolt and and now a Ford Lightning, and they're amazing.

Fortunat:

I mean, when I compare that to the cars that I built and made in the late nineties, it's like, you know, it's like a horse and buggy to a Porsche. Right? It's, like, unbelievable. And and, yeah, we've been electrifying revisions fleet as fast as we feel is responsible. And so we've been buying almost exclusively electric vehicles for the light duty part of our fleet for for several years, probably for four or five years.

Fortunat:

So our, you know, our sales team and our and our budget managers and and QC and stuff who who run around in, you know, in sedans are pretty much all in electric cars today. We have some we have some older, you know, hybrids and and whatever. And they do everything we need and then some. I mean, they're they're they're cheap to operate, clean, match, you know, our brand. They're fun to drive or and they, you know, they refuel at the office.

Fortunat:

You don't have to stop for fuel on the way to a job site or whatever. And we started to do the same with the so I would say the medium duty part of our fleet or pickups. Not all of our pickups are gonna go to electric because some of our pickups are primarily tow vehicles, and electric's Actually, they're fine tow vehicles if you're towing, you know, 60 miles to a job site and back, but Maine is a pretty big place. I mean, we got job sites that are 300 miles away from our office, and you're not gonna tow a trailer there with an electric car and and make it home. But we but we started to add, you know, electric trucks and vans in places to our fleet.

Fortunat:

A part of the fleet that is not yet electrified, and we still are waiting basically for the product to to work is the medium heavy duty part of your box trucks is what we install what we install out of primarily fourteen, sixteen foot box trucks. The options there are not yet great. I don't think they're far away, but they're they're not yet great. So so our commitment is to is to buy them as soon as they're available. And we've said we're not gonna buy a new gas or diesel vehicle after 2030.

Fortunat:

It doesn't mean we won't buy a vehicle if there's no vehicle that meets our needs, we'll buy a used one. But the idea of putting a new fuel burning vehicle on the road after 2030 feels inconsistent with what we know we have to do in terms of energy transition between now and middle of the century because of because a vehicle's gonna have a, you know, ten or fifteen or twenty year life depending on type. And so that's what we're doing. And and I would say we've been very happy with it. I'm definitely have seen, you know, operating costs come down.

Fortunat:

I think people are very happy driving them. Our customers were happy to see us show up in them. And, of course, now we have a we have a pretty significant chunk of our business that is installing EV chargers. And so it's not crazy if you show up at the EV charging site and you're driving a a diesel f one fifty or whatever.

Hervé:

Yeah. Or maybe that's also us getting older. Like, EV cars are not that novel anymore. Everybody has seen them. Everybody drives with them.

Hervé:

You don't even have to be in the store industry to to to drive in it. Maybe that is us aging.

Fortunat:

Yeah. No. And it's fun to see, and I would say, you know, on our last year, it's fun to see how quickly they are growing in a variety of markets. I mean, in in Europe and and certainly China as we know. But even in in various markets in in East Africa, I mean, we, you know, I have a friend who runs an electric bus company in Nairobi, and they are wildly cheaper to operate than diesel buses and and really growing fast as as a fraction of the market.

Hervé:

Yeah. On my trip several weeks ago to China, I was in a busy intersection, and and everything's white.

Fortunat:

Amazing.

Hervé:

You see people moving a lot, like, at fast, and and it's just white. Because everything is electric. The little scooters are electric. The buses are electric. Cars are electric.

Hervé:

It was it was strange to see so much activity. It's just wideness. It's like, that was yeah. That was the struggle.

Fortunat:

We don't even realize sort of how we are surrounded by the din of traffic noise.

Hervé:

Last question about acquisitions. We've Vision Energy has been acquiring other solar companies, and I wonder, is this something that's kind of strategic? It's like you have a strategic plan, not at that time of the budget. You kind of put in place maybe a strategy, or is it more something that kind of like, you know, some people in the industry that you've maybe were competing with for many years, but kind of friendly competition? Is it kind of something that grows organically, or is it more strategic play, or or have you done both?

Fortunat:

Yeah. I would say it's a mix of both. In in the last ten years, we've acquired three solar companies. So we're not sort of gobbling up solar companies. That's that's not our model.

Fortunat:

But mostly, they are sort of opportunistic. You know, they're folks that we know and respect and and as you say, some of us compete against and who are looking for an exit or looking for to do something different. And the value of solar companies is primarily in the people. Right? I mean, there's we all think we have sort of incredible incredible brand value and IP and and systems and whatever.

Fortunat:

And and, you know, let's do and some of us have real value there. But, like, I can go buy trucks and tools somewhere else. You know, when we bring a team into Revision Energy, it's primarily about acquiring the talent because the value of Revision is primarily about the people at Revision. Right? And so if we can bring complementary skill sets into our theme, we think that's valuable.

Fortunat:

Other times it has been a combination of that and a strategic move. For example, we acquired a friendly competitor of ours down in Massachusetts two years ago that used to be called Sunbug Solar. And we know those guys very well. We knew there was lots of sort of mission and product alignment. And we felt like we had to be bigger in Massachusetts to be competitive.

Fortunat:

We were sort of what we felt was below the minimum viable scale for that market, and Sunbug was about the same size as we were in Massachusetts, a little bigger, and we said, Hey, we could be better if we were together. The owners of that business said, Yeah, we agree. And so we have brought them into the fold. And so that's the way we've thought about it. We haven't done this yet, but I've also imagined that there may be places where and we talked before about adding a product line or adding a technology.

Fortunat:

Instead of standing up a heat pump business, does it make sense to go buy a small HVAC contractor who's already good at installing heat pumps? It's not the way we did. We have done the growth of of our various business lines, but I don't know. I'm presupposed that it's not gonna be in the future. Just because learning takes time and is expensive, and if you can buy smarts or sort of acquire smarts through hiring, you know, why wouldn't you do that?

Fortunat:

We don't have we don't actually have to make every single mistake ourselves. Right? We can we can benefit from other people I think already made the mistake.

Hervé:

Under the last wise words, Fortinet. Thank you very much for the podcast about what Sony installers need to know.

Fortunat:

Thanks so much.

Hervé:

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.