The High Performance Edge Podcast
00:03:27 · Larry Waters
[00:03:27] S2: Well, Peter, I mean, you were involved in my earliest iteration of this entire thing because you built my website. So the... I've been in the trade about forty three years. I really started doing... I had ten years of commercial and so I had a good understanding of things, but then I started doing residential service. And I realized at some point that like I wanted to talk to the homeowners because it was just a better feel for me. And that morphed into getting into the service and sales side, and then which morphed into paying more attention to things, which brought up questions in my mind, which is why why I could fix an air conditioner, and apparently it was working by all the all the stats I could take off of it, but the but the homeowner was still uncomfortable. Yeah. So I always had the need to find into that. I stumbled upon BPI. I went through that whole program, and the sugar was just right in the Kool Aid, so I drank a lot of it. And I never went back like contractors a lot did. It was really a means to an end when I went through those classes because it was required for a specific program that was coming out of California. Right. Energy upgrade California, way ahead of its time, didn't do all that well. But I just... I figured out how to make houses more efficient. My customer reactions were great. My sales numbers went up significantly. And so I just kept going and learning more and learning more and learning more. And I aligned myself with some of the really smart people in this industry and just got as much information as I can handle, like Rich Chip would and some of those, the grandfathers of home performance. So I says, gonna go build this business. I'm gonna only electrify houses. Proud to say six years, I've never installed anything gas. I won't. We put a lot of caps on lines. And it's really worked out good. And I wanted to build it off of a foundation of what I thought was inefficient and I didn't like about the traditional HVAC industry. Yeah. And do it correctly. And I said, since I have this knowledge and all of these programs are coming out, whenever a program comes out for an incentive program, there's always some workforce education training funds available. And so I kind of went into that route too.
00:05:24 · Peter Troast
[00:05:24] S1: That's amazing. Yeah. That's great. I I guess I wanna, you know, just dwell a little bit on, you know, how visionary you were. I mean, today, you know, a decision to be an electrification only company might not seem all that, you know, abnormal. But but back then, that was a very bold move. Some some in the industry might say a reckless move. Say more about how you arrived at that decision and and, you know, made a, you know, a pretty very, very clear differentiation call.
00:05:56 · Larry Waters
[00:05:56] S2: I saw what was coming in California, and I said there's nobody that's gonna attack this the right way. I was very passionate about what I was doing. And I said, I'm gonna be two or three years ahead of the curve and I'm gonna start this thing that nobody's ever heard about. Nobody's gonna electrify my home. Come on. Right? But there are now people going, I need to electrify my home. And we knew, we had that conversation early on when we built a website and named the company. That part of my initial business model. But it was really, I didn't know how far it was going to go, but I knew there was going be a market for it at some point. I knew I was really good at... I'm a good salesperson and I'm a good engineer and I'm conscientious and I steer my customers in the right direction, sometimes to the detriment of my own profitability. But I knew that I could make this happen, but I also knew that I couldn't be that guy that starts his own business and thinks everything's going to be easy. I'm a realist. I knew when I started the business, somebody else was going to have to do the paperwork and I was not going to be able to do all the work myself and sell everything. And you know, there's only twenty four hours in the day and you got to sleep at some point. So when I formulated the business idea, I said, I know I can sell this. I infiltrated all the marketplace... Marketplaces of of the customer personas that I knew would help me build it on the beginning. Yeah. So I tapped into these markets. And basically, I went to meetings where people that were talking about heat pumps were, and I said, I'm your guy. I said, a lot of people can install heat pumps, but nobody else has the same vision you do for a fully electric California.
00:07:35 · Peter Troast, Larry Waters
[00:07:35] S1: Yeah. Yeah. [00:07:36] S2: And so that built that. And because of the personality types that attend those meetings, those people all became ambassadors for my business. Yeah. [00:07:44] S1: Right. [00:07:44] S2: And it was just able to grow. Yeah. And so when I rolled out into my own shingle and my own first payroll, will be... Actually, it's July 1. We're coming up on a celebration. It'll be five years in July 1 as my first payroll. I was with that other person before that. Yeah. And I literally opened the shop with three months backlog of work. I had myself, the lead installer that I hired at the other company to come with me at the time. And I hired his wife as my office manager. Now it takes a lot of faith for a guy and his wife to both put his... Their their whole family's eggs in one basket. Yes. And... But we had we had built a track record. We were rolling in, and this is kind of built since then. So started with three folks. [00:08:27] S1: Yeah. Larry, one of the things that, you know, you tend to hear around the country, is that there's nothing comparable to the California market in terms of the, you know, the the cohort of people that are, you know, interested in electrification for the... For for its own sake. Right? They they want the fossil fuels out of their home. And yet, you know, I think while you obviously do work in the Bay Area, you have a big chunk of your service area that is not Berkeley. Right? And [00:08:55] S2: Right.
00:08:55 · Larry Waters, Peter Troast
[00:08:55] S2: Right. [00:08:56] S1: And is more, you know, heading up towards Sacramento and and the Central Valley kind of area. So say more about how you've seen the market change and and that, you know, the sort of the acceptance, interest, tolerance of of, you know, of an entirely electrification business. [00:09:13] S2: Well, I think when people find out that when this is all done right, and it's done through one contractor, and it's a very smooth process Yeah. When they come out the other end, it's just life changing experience. They've never they've never experienced, like, comfort, safety, just all the things we deliver. So so that story gets out there. There's a there's a big awareness of it in California, although not everybody understands because the... You know, some of the air resources boards are moving regulations along that are kind of bringing this around. Mhmm. But it's still worth teaching people what the change is because because a lot of people don't pay... Really pay a lot of attention. Yeah. Yeah. But there is also these pockets of personas. So part of what we know is we know who our customers are. We know who those personas are, and we can find those in any town we go into just looking at data. Yeah. So there's enough people that want to do this right. And as it moves along and spreads, and as the pain of higher gas bills and higher electric bills are getting on, people are looking for other solutions. [00:10:15] S1: Yeah.
00:10:15 · Peter Troast, Larry Waters
[00:10:15] S1: Yeah. [00:10:15] S2: And you can't stick with gas. You know, my house costs like $800 a year to operate. I have no gas meter. And I... It's it's comfortable, and we don't have to conserve. Like, it's [00:10:28] S1: Right. [00:10:28] S2: We live however we want, and it costs very little. You can't do that with any other solution. So it's just getting the word out. [00:10:34] S1: Yeah. Yep. [00:10:35] S2: And and we can keep in mind, like, the Maine is one of the biggest adopter states in The United States, and it's it's not California weather out there. [00:10:45] S1: So it's not. No. And you're right. We've... We have crossed... You know, we crossed the tipping point where I think everybody, you know, just... You see heat pumps everywhere, and, nobody questions their validity because they've survived the polar vortex and and Right. You know, and have have, have worked great. Well, I think that's that's really interesting. I'm glad you kind of said that because I I think this is a trend that we're seeing across the country. Was more and more people are aware and more... And it's less about being motivated by electrification than than it is about, I understand this technology better. Just one clarifying point just to make sure everybody understands the business model. Do you go the full gamut? In other words, you'll support them in the transition to induction cooking and making... And getting their water off of gas, etcetera.