1 00:00:05,125 --> 00:00:13,310 Welcome back to Grid Connections, the podcast where we explore all things transportation, clean energy, and our power grid connecting all these systems together. 2 00:00:13,471 --> 00:00:22,307 This week I'm on the road, but I'm thrilled to chat with Josh Dorfman, co-founder of Plantd the startup pioneer in carbon negative building materials from super fast growing 3 00:00:22,307 --> 00:00:29,081 grass, and co-founder and host of Supercool, a media platform exploring the future of climate innovation. 4 00:00:29,081 --> 00:00:39,007 In this episode, Josh dives deep into how he and his SpaceX team harness first principles thinking to produce stronger, lighter and greener alternatives to traditional wood 5 00:00:39,007 --> 00:00:39,997 products. 6 00:00:39,997 --> 00:00:48,461 We also talk about the importance of a consumer friendly approach to sustainable tech, covering everything from streamlined solar installations to how everyday homeowners can 7 00:00:48,461 --> 00:00:51,822 effortlessly embrace cleaner, more efficient energy solutions. 8 00:00:51,821 --> 00:01:00,737 We cover everything from how Plantd is revolutionizing building materials with carbon negative technology, why Supercool focuses on telling consumer driven stories about 9 00:01:00,737 --> 00:01:10,394 climate and clean energy breakthroughs, real world examples from installing better HVAC systems at no upfront cost to creating demand response powerhouses that cut carbon and 10 00:01:10,394 --> 00:01:11,496 boost profits. 11 00:01:11,496 --> 00:01:15,338 Also some quick updates and announcements for this week and next. 12 00:01:15,338 --> 00:01:19,079 I'll be at the EV Charging Summit in Expo in Las Vegas next week. 13 00:01:19,079 --> 00:01:20,490 Let me know if you'll be there. 14 00:01:20,490 --> 00:01:21,860 We'd love to meet up. 15 00:01:21,860 --> 00:01:24,901 And I'm also recording a couple of new podcasts right from the summit. 16 00:01:24,901 --> 00:01:29,103 So this week and next, expect probably just one episode each. 17 00:01:29,123 --> 00:01:34,425 We'll get some fantastic content coming your way though straight from the event floor as I'll be recording some there. 18 00:01:34,424 --> 00:01:36,245 Enjoy today's conversation. 19 00:01:36,245 --> 00:01:40,909 Please share this episode with at least one other person who would enjoy these insights as well. 20 00:01:40,909 --> 00:01:43,501 Plus, don't forget to leave a pause review on our podcast page. 21 00:01:43,501 --> 00:01:45,732 It helps more curious minds find us. 22 00:01:45,732 --> 00:01:53,788 And make sure to sign up for our brand new newsletter using the link in the show notes to stay plugged into the latest on clean energy, charging, and cutting edge climate 23 00:01:53,788 --> 00:01:54,779 solutions. 24 00:01:54,779 --> 00:01:56,820 With that, enjoy. 25 00:02:01,983 --> 00:02:08,337 for those listening who may not be familiar, can you just kinda give a quick overview about Supercool and how it came to be. 26 00:02:08,518 --> 00:02:09,959 Yeah, absolutely. 27 00:02:09,959 --> 00:02:19,217 So about a year ago, I was just rolling out as the co-founder and CEO of a company called Plantd that makes carbon negative building materials. 28 00:02:19,217 --> 00:02:27,885 And I started with a couple of guys from SpaceX and we had this thought, could we figure out a way to pull carbon from the atmosphere and turn that into something useful and 29 00:02:27,885 --> 00:02:28,325 durable? 30 00:02:28,325 --> 00:02:36,742 So we invented a way to commercially grow like this grass that kind of grows like bamboo and then mechanically harvest it. 31 00:02:36,742 --> 00:02:47,089 and build a factory, actually a modular production line to turn this grass into like plywood or oriented strand board type product. 32 00:02:47,089 --> 00:02:48,050 And then we got D.R. 33 00:02:48,050 --> 00:02:51,692 Hoarding, the largest builder in the country to invest and buy our first 10 million panels. 34 00:02:51,692 --> 00:02:58,977 yeah, so it kind of like three to four years rocket ship, so to speak, really exciting business. 35 00:02:58,977 --> 00:03:06,182 And when I left about a year ago, kind of picked my head up after looking at construction and the building industry and home building. 36 00:03:06,598 --> 00:03:11,182 It started asking like, well, what else is happening around climate innovation? 37 00:03:11,342 --> 00:03:14,685 you know, what's the state of the industry, so to speak, or industries. 38 00:03:14,685 --> 00:03:17,507 And what I started seeing was kind of. 39 00:03:18,309 --> 00:03:25,175 You had a decade of technologies that had had, you know, this runway to move, go from pilot stage to commercial stage and now scale. 40 00:03:25,175 --> 00:03:32,381 And so you had lots and lots of technologies that were, that were really starting to take off, cut carbon, boost the bottom line, make life better in the process. 41 00:03:32,381 --> 00:03:33,520 had more cities. 42 00:03:33,520 --> 00:03:38,714 embracing climate action and climate action plans and really turning themselves into living laboratories for change. 43 00:03:38,714 --> 00:03:47,024 And of course, you had the tailwinds of the, you know, the IRA and the government, the money that the federal government was backing behind these different technologies and 44 00:03:47,024 --> 00:03:50,642 other incentives and, you know, pools of capital coming from elsewhere. 45 00:03:50,642 --> 00:03:57,506 And so it just seemed to me we're in this new era of climate solutions that are actually here scaling with a real business case behind them. 46 00:03:57,506 --> 00:04:00,688 But yet a story that wasn't being fully told or appreciated. 47 00:04:00,688 --> 00:04:03,580 So super cool really is that media company. 48 00:04:03,806 --> 00:04:14,857 that aims to tell those stories, share the business case, really understand what are the innovations that enable these types of solutions to grow and scale, and kind of de-risk it 49 00:04:14,857 --> 00:04:21,062 for other businesses and business people or policymakers who are saying, this climate's increasingly encroaching on my world. 50 00:04:21,062 --> 00:04:23,024 I have to deal with this. 51 00:04:23,024 --> 00:04:29,372 I'm not necessarily steeped in this, but now I can find things that are real, actually like deliver an ROI. 52 00:04:29,372 --> 00:04:31,297 I could go bring the solution to my CEO. 53 00:04:31,297 --> 00:04:36,098 And so we really shaped Supercool as this business to business media brand to deliver that kind of value. 54 00:04:36,599 --> 00:04:37,120 That's great. 55 00:04:37,120 --> 00:04:46,936 And I completely agree with you that it's something that's kind of much needed because over the years I've just seen so many great kind of products that appear and then kind of 56 00:04:46,936 --> 00:04:50,528 slowly they're disappear, disappear overnight even. 57 00:04:50,679 --> 00:04:54,941 And unfortunately just don't get the kind of visibility that they deserve. 58 00:04:54,941 --> 00:05:01,349 So I think what to you is right now what we're seeing kind of like 59 00:05:01,349 --> 00:05:10,893 stand out the most or like what would have been kind of some of the, is it really just the visibility that's a challenge or what, what to you is the thing that needs to be, really 60 00:05:10,893 --> 00:05:19,267 kind of help these companies kind of stand out and get to that next level or specifically anything you look for when trying to cover a company on super cool. 61 00:05:19,814 --> 00:05:22,055 Yeah, that's a, I appreciate the question. 62 00:05:22,055 --> 00:05:23,557 I would say there's a few things. 63 00:05:23,557 --> 00:05:33,343 What's, what's really top of mind is today, you know, we're having conversations with, well, maybe I would say it this way. 64 00:05:33,343 --> 00:05:40,128 You know, we end up having a lot of conversations that move toward, you know, of course, electrification of buildings. 65 00:05:40,128 --> 00:05:47,453 And when we're talking to companies, like we talked to this company called Butterfly, which is B-U-D-D-E-R-F-L-Y. 66 00:05:47,453 --> 00:05:49,334 And this guy, Al Sabloui. 67 00:05:49,342 --> 00:05:51,082 Anyway, not a climate guy. 68 00:05:51,082 --> 00:05:54,162 I mean, that's not by background, really great entrepreneur. 69 00:05:54,362 --> 00:05:58,142 And he started seeing this opportunity to build an energy as a service company, right? 70 00:05:58,142 --> 00:06:06,842 Where he could say, okay, we're going to come into a restaurant and we're going to be able to replace all the old stuff, give you a new HVAC system, new refrigeration, really 71 00:06:06,842 --> 00:06:08,062 modernize and upgrade. 72 00:06:08,062 --> 00:06:13,242 And we're going to drive so much energy savings and there's incentives and we're going to put this financial stack together, right? 73 00:06:13,242 --> 00:06:18,998 That we can build a really exciting business around this and share in the savings together, et cetera, et 74 00:06:19,208 --> 00:06:27,678 So that's all well and good, but what Al did that was really interesting was he went to Popeyes, or he would go to six Popeyes or Sonics on Long Island. 75 00:06:27,678 --> 00:06:33,488 He'd be like, have I got a deal for you, zero money down, I'm gonna make you an offer you can't refuse. 76 00:06:33,609 --> 00:06:45,672 And so he goes into Sonic, gets six of them to agree, their energy bills, creates a better customer experience, and then. 77 00:06:45,672 --> 00:06:54,446 Popeye's headquarters calls and is like, hey, we got 7,000 franchises, or we got thousands of, right, and he does it for McDonald's and KFC and Pizza Hut and he's everywhere. 78 00:06:54,446 --> 00:07:01,348 And so he's grown his business from effectively zero stores to 7,000 stores in about five years. 79 00:07:01,949 --> 00:07:04,890 And then that conversation goes to this next piece. 80 00:07:04,890 --> 00:07:07,601 And I see this no matter what company we're talking to. 81 00:07:07,601 --> 00:07:14,238 The next piece is, and I'll just say like, we talked to this company Brainbox AI just got acquired by Train, where they're using AI to like, 82 00:07:14,238 --> 00:07:18,538 drive down HVAC costs and buildings by 25%, take over everything. 83 00:07:18,538 --> 00:07:26,458 All these guys, once they start talking about like we get penetration, we're in thousands of buildings, now we're gonna create the world's biggest virtual power plant. 84 00:07:26,458 --> 00:07:28,698 We're gonna control all this energy, right? 85 00:07:28,698 --> 00:07:34,438 All this demand from the grid that we can now control, dial back, sell back to the grid if they need it. 86 00:07:34,438 --> 00:07:36,438 And this is the massive, massive play. 87 00:07:36,438 --> 00:07:42,778 And no matter what company we're talking to, it almost all goes to this point of demand response. 88 00:07:43,066 --> 00:07:44,198 And I find that fascinating. 89 00:07:44,198 --> 00:07:53,630 So that's something that's really top of mind for me, because I just see it over and over again across industries, people kind of seeing the same thing that is a huge financial 90 00:07:53,630 --> 00:07:58,606 opportunity and hugely important for the future of the grid. 91 00:07:58,873 --> 00:07:59,643 Yeah, that makes sense. 92 00:07:59,643 --> 00:08:12,397 But I mean, that's a huge kind of realization to have what was there any one in particular that kind of made you kind of realize that's what it was or what was kind of the common 93 00:08:12,397 --> 00:08:16,369 factor or use it just it just sounds like it just keeps coming up and up. 94 00:08:16,369 --> 00:08:23,501 But I'm kind of curious if there was any one that really like made it stand out like, okay, this is what what we need to focus on. 95 00:08:23,922 --> 00:08:27,223 Well, you know, it came up. 96 00:08:27,223 --> 00:08:28,204 Yeah. 97 00:08:28,424 --> 00:08:29,204 Yeah. 98 00:08:29,204 --> 00:08:29,784 Yeah. 99 00:08:29,784 --> 00:08:31,105 Well, I'll tell you. 100 00:08:32,246 --> 00:08:35,347 So here's how we started thinking about it initially. 101 00:08:35,347 --> 00:08:38,968 I think it was just even our second episode we'd launched last summer. 102 00:08:39,068 --> 00:08:41,839 And, you know, we're trying to tell stories. 103 00:08:41,839 --> 00:08:51,934 Also, one of the things that delights me is telling stories where this type of momentum is happening in places where you just wouldn't necessarily expect. 104 00:08:51,934 --> 00:08:53,002 It wouldn't be 105 00:08:53,002 --> 00:08:54,433 It's not left coast, right coast. 106 00:08:54,433 --> 00:08:59,265 You just wouldn't necessarily anticipate that some of these places are really these hotbeds of innovation. 107 00:08:59,265 --> 00:09:12,161 And I came across the story of how the utility in Utah, Rocky Mountain Power, was trying to avoid the situation that had happened to utilities in California by incentivizing home 108 00:09:12,161 --> 00:09:17,173 solar to such a degree that now you had too much solar flowing onto the grid that you couldn't use it. 109 00:09:17,173 --> 00:09:20,484 And a lot of that had to be curtailed, just wasted. 110 00:09:20,486 --> 00:09:24,348 And so Rocking Pound and Power was trying to figure out, well, what are we going to incentivize? 111 00:09:24,348 --> 00:09:34,474 And this is about five years ago, they said, you know what, we're going to pull back on the home solar incentives, but we're really going to improve and increase the battery 112 00:09:34,474 --> 00:09:35,575 incentives. 113 00:09:36,116 --> 00:09:40,938 And when they did that, because that's actually, we'd like to see homeowners put more batteries in their homes. 114 00:09:40,938 --> 00:09:47,090 And if we could control those batteries, then maybe we don't have to fire up the natural gas peaker plants. 115 00:09:47,090 --> 00:09:53,842 when everyone comes home at five o'clock at night and everyone's using energy and that's not just carbon, that's also cost, right? 116 00:09:53,842 --> 00:09:56,213 Because to turn that thing on, right, drives the race. 117 00:09:56,213 --> 00:10:02,254 And so like 90 % of the solar companies packed up and left the state when that happened. 118 00:10:02,735 --> 00:10:11,837 But I'd read about this one company, ES Solar, like Eric, Sam, ES Solar, that was like, well, we're going to stick or like, we're kind of from here. 119 00:10:11,837 --> 00:10:13,938 We don't really have anywhere else to go. 120 00:10:13,944 --> 00:10:15,397 this is our market. 121 00:10:15,504 --> 00:10:15,774 Right? 122 00:10:15,774 --> 00:10:19,235 Like, I guess we got to figure out how to go sell batteries. 123 00:10:19,455 --> 00:10:22,346 And they did really successfully. 124 00:10:22,346 --> 00:10:33,259 And now like 96 or some odd percent of every battery that's sold connected to this Rocky Mountain Power, you know, essentially is a virtual power plant where they can control to 125 00:10:33,259 --> 00:10:37,520 degree those batteries if they need that energy or dial it back, is installed by ES Solar. 126 00:10:37,520 --> 00:10:38,581 They learned a ton. 127 00:10:38,581 --> 00:10:43,654 They're now expanding across the, you know, the west of the western side of the state from this little company. 128 00:10:43,654 --> 00:10:54,447 And that really got me thinking like, wow, what's so interesting here is when you align the incentives of the utility and kind of that intermediate, the solar or in this case, 129 00:10:54,447 --> 00:11:00,517 grid battery storage company and the homeowner around the incentives, financial incentives to make this work. 130 00:11:00,679 --> 00:11:09,071 You can really build some very powerful infrastructure and do what's right for the homeowner, do what's right for those businesses that sit in between and do what's right 131 00:11:09,071 --> 00:11:13,102 for the utility, which ultimately keeps costs low for all rate payers in Utah. 132 00:11:13,190 --> 00:11:17,126 And then that just, I just thought, wow, this, this is really, this is fascinating. 133 00:11:17,126 --> 00:11:19,574 This is something that we're going to continue to keep our eye on. 134 00:11:20,435 --> 00:11:31,775 Yeah, that's a very interesting story because I think, yeah, mean, just personally, I even worked in the solar industry about a decade ago and you have heard a lot of kind of states 135 00:11:31,775 --> 00:11:35,915 or the solar industry in particular kind of have a pullback in certain areas. 136 00:11:36,055 --> 00:11:45,095 So that's a really fascinating way to see how, and so even though was a little chaotic that there was that opportunity to move to the battery side of stuff to really help power 137 00:11:45,095 --> 00:11:47,235 and kind of find that solution. 138 00:11:47,355 --> 00:11:48,615 I think. 139 00:11:49,219 --> 00:11:59,246 One one thing I guess when this kind of topic comes up usually around like controlling the battery or people's energy. 140 00:11:59,519 --> 00:12:08,984 I always hear all sorts of kind of I don't want to say full on conspiracy ideas whether there's a little bit that American like I don't want somebody telling me I can't use my 141 00:12:08,984 --> 00:12:09,664 power with that. 142 00:12:09,664 --> 00:12:16,409 I I'm sure those are kind of conversations you probably hear with some of these products a lot too and 143 00:12:16,947 --> 00:12:23,267 I've always just found that this podcast has been kind of a pretty powerful way for people to like, Oh, I didn't think of it that way. 144 00:12:23,267 --> 00:12:32,587 And I'm kind of curious with your own podcast and some of these conversations you're having about what are some of those kind of changing points or kind of different ways that 145 00:12:32,587 --> 00:12:43,187 people like, Oh, I mean, obviously I think this has always been the case for solar and even EVs is like that total cost of ownership or kind of like, Oh, okay. 146 00:12:43,187 --> 00:12:45,687 So I, there, there is something I'm getting back from this. 147 00:12:45,687 --> 00:12:46,673 There, there is a, 148 00:12:46,673 --> 00:12:47,905 I give and take, it's fair. 149 00:12:47,905 --> 00:12:52,644 so I'm kind of curious if there's stories like that or other things that kind of stand out. 150 00:12:52,644 --> 00:12:55,969 We're just with the topic of batteries or just in more general. 151 00:12:56,604 --> 00:13:02,159 Well, the topic of batteries, I mean, there's two things that trigger for me Chase. 152 00:13:02,159 --> 00:13:08,204 The one with batteries, last week our guest was Mary Powell, the CEO of Sunrun. 153 00:13:08,204 --> 00:13:14,930 they're the large, it was fascinating, but we didn't get into like, tell me the history of your solar company. 154 00:13:14,930 --> 00:13:20,936 We got into like, okay, you're the first company to get to a million solar panel customers. 155 00:13:20,936 --> 00:13:24,088 And now you're the leader in like, 156 00:13:24,146 --> 00:13:34,679 battery storage sales, like 62 % of their new customers in last quarter in 2024 bought batteries to pair with their solar systems. 157 00:13:34,679 --> 00:13:35,819 That's like a mind boggle. 158 00:13:35,819 --> 00:13:36,919 That's so fast, right? 159 00:13:36,919 --> 00:13:39,850 That's so fast it gets almost two thirds of Americans. 160 00:13:39,850 --> 00:13:47,212 And so the conversation was really about how do you do that? 161 00:13:47,212 --> 00:13:53,614 Like what are you doing differently in terms of sales and getting to that adoption, particularly of batteries? 162 00:13:53,848 --> 00:13:55,439 we started having this conversation. 163 00:13:55,439 --> 00:13:59,490 She was saying, we brought on this other expert, Jessica Bergman, who's a marketing expert. 164 00:13:59,490 --> 00:14:00,830 We started talking about productization. 165 00:14:00,830 --> 00:14:04,581 was like, okay, you can have all the clean energy innovation in the world you want. 166 00:14:04,581 --> 00:14:13,664 If you can't figure out how to actually create a delightful customer experience around adopting it, then you're always going to stay in a niche market. 167 00:14:13,664 --> 00:14:15,114 I didn't know this. 168 00:14:15,114 --> 00:14:20,006 I only knew it when we started researching the episode that you take the most... 169 00:14:21,352 --> 00:14:31,278 Prevalent kind of smart home technology that exists or one of them at least you didn't around energy You would say well smart thermostats like a nest thermostat or an ecobee and 170 00:14:31,278 --> 00:14:32,669 there's a million others, right? 171 00:14:32,669 --> 00:14:41,214 Those are only in 16 % of homes So it's beyond like early adopter, but not too far beyond early then and they've been around forever So the question is like how do you actually get 172 00:14:41,214 --> 00:14:42,134 that in? 173 00:14:43,255 --> 00:14:49,032 You know great majority of beyond right and so what she was saying she's like, yeah, of course we have to change 174 00:14:49,032 --> 00:14:55,889 the way we talk about this stuff, we can't keep talking about kilowatt hours and just how awesome the tech is. 175 00:14:55,889 --> 00:14:59,932 And she was really saying like, we're not selling solar and batteries anymore. 176 00:14:59,932 --> 00:15:01,384 We're really trying to sell peace of mind. 177 00:15:01,384 --> 00:15:11,243 And if you're in Houston and barrel came through or you're somewhere else and your power got knocked out and utilities are increasingly unreliable, this is a hedge, right? 178 00:15:11,584 --> 00:15:13,965 To give you peace of mind. 179 00:15:15,282 --> 00:15:18,064 you'll lock in your energy rates or you'll have a sense of what you have. 180 00:15:18,064 --> 00:15:21,907 It was basically like, we're gonna give you control over this piece that's getting more expensive, right? 181 00:15:21,907 --> 00:15:25,570 So it's peace of mind control over your life in that way. 182 00:15:25,570 --> 00:15:29,642 And she was saying that's really what we lead with it today. 183 00:15:29,642 --> 00:15:37,908 But the other thing she said that I actually thought was more interesting, what came up was, okay, like if you wanna get solar and batteries today, like what do you do? 184 00:15:37,908 --> 00:15:42,966 You go on the web, you start doing a search and you're instantly like overwhelmed and confused and you don't know. 185 00:15:42,966 --> 00:15:45,888 who to trust or, you know, it's just like a terrible experience, right? 186 00:15:45,888 --> 00:15:49,210 And that's just like trying to, you know, and people just throw up their hands. 187 00:15:49,271 --> 00:16:00,919 And so, you know, if Sunrun can get you past that, one of the things that came up was they're basically adopting the Domino's pizza tracker for solar installation, right? 188 00:16:00,919 --> 00:16:02,840 It's on your apps, like, right? 189 00:16:02,840 --> 00:16:11,006 So that it's so, so you build the trust, you know, where you are in the process, okay, the panels are on the truck, the permit's been approved. 190 00:16:11,006 --> 00:16:14,309 They're coming to your house, they're going up, the connection's been made. 191 00:16:14,309 --> 00:16:24,038 so bringing that transparency, I feel like, to that process also gives people that comfort level, that, this company's real, I can trust this process, I can feel better about it. 192 00:16:24,058 --> 00:16:29,433 I think those things are really important to overcome a lot of the hesitancy. 193 00:16:29,433 --> 00:16:37,380 And just really, the clean energy industry needs to start thinking like consumer products companies and not like technology companies. 194 00:16:37,779 --> 00:16:39,659 No, I think that's a great call out. 195 00:16:39,659 --> 00:16:46,179 And that's something I just kind of haven't played with electric vehicles for as crazy as it sounds over two decades now. 196 00:16:46,219 --> 00:16:55,779 That's become so true with so many of the people coming into the space and also very true of a lot of the stuff I'd seen with solar was just like, okay, we can talk about 197 00:16:55,779 --> 00:16:56,399 kilowatts. 198 00:16:56,399 --> 00:17:02,079 We can talk about PV and AC to DC integrations and at 97 % efficiency. 199 00:17:02,079 --> 00:17:05,639 And that's really great for people like who have trouble sleeping. 200 00:17:05,733 --> 00:17:10,816 It's not really great for like actual adoption and people using the technology. 201 00:17:11,647 --> 00:17:16,489 I, I'm kind of curious if, I mean, 62 % is a really wild. 202 00:17:16,489 --> 00:17:18,220 It's, it's crazy to see that number. 203 00:17:18,220 --> 00:17:29,387 Cause, especially when I was doing it about a decade ago, actually longer than I know, but having a battery and obviously a big part of that has been kind of like the EV revolution 204 00:17:29,387 --> 00:17:33,043 and just how many batteries are now at production at scale. 205 00:17:33,043 --> 00:17:37,203 But back then it was extremely rare to ever see a battery backup system. 206 00:17:37,203 --> 00:17:42,303 was usually, it would be some sort of off grid in the middle of nowhere kind of thing. 207 00:17:42,303 --> 00:17:45,063 And it was a bunch of lead acid batteries, but I'm kind of curious. 208 00:17:45,063 --> 00:17:50,243 Did she share what is holding back from 90 % instead of just 60? 209 00:17:50,243 --> 00:17:55,523 Is it the cost or that that's really interesting to me because it makes a lot of sense to pair the two. 210 00:17:55,523 --> 00:18:01,499 If you have scale to do it, especially if you're kind of selling that hedge, but I'm curious if she shared it all. 211 00:18:01,499 --> 00:18:05,602 What is kind of the last thing kind of holding back more people from adopting it? 212 00:18:06,108 --> 00:18:11,018 Yeah, unfortunately, we didn't get that far in the conversation. 213 00:18:11,018 --> 00:18:13,138 I think it's great question. 214 00:18:13,138 --> 00:18:16,343 mean, she would probably say, you know, I mean, she's pretty great. 215 00:18:16,343 --> 00:18:23,916 She's, to me, she's just of a lot of the folks we've had a chance to interview kind of across Clean Energy. 216 00:18:23,916 --> 00:18:29,289 She's the most customer attuned, customer centric, right, CEO, which I think is really important. 217 00:18:29,289 --> 00:18:31,990 I think that's, it's a good question. 218 00:18:32,030 --> 00:18:33,110 I'm not sure. 219 00:18:33,110 --> 00:18:35,450 They've doubled where the rest of the industry is. 220 00:18:35,450 --> 00:18:37,667 It's at about a 28 % attachment rate. 221 00:18:37,667 --> 00:18:42,667 Now I've been meaning to reach out to her actually, because yeah, I I've listened to a couple of her conversations. 222 00:18:42,667 --> 00:18:44,447 It's just the way they you're totally right. 223 00:18:44,447 --> 00:18:52,807 The way they position how I think for a while it had been kind of Tesla was doing a really good job of showing that kind of integration and how this stuff works together. 224 00:18:52,907 --> 00:19:00,307 But unfortunately, that just seems like they still do solar, but it's been much more focused on kind of the forward looking things. 225 00:19:00,307 --> 00:19:03,327 And so seeing a company like that, that's still really 226 00:19:03,399 --> 00:19:09,167 getting that dialed in and I think that was been the missing piece for a while. 227 00:19:09,748 --> 00:19:12,115 But I'm sorry, what were you going to say? 228 00:19:12,210 --> 00:19:14,551 no, I agree with you on all of that. 229 00:19:14,551 --> 00:19:28,616 I actually was going to give you a different example of kind of a breakthrough, something that we've seen in an entirely different use case industry, if that's okay. 230 00:19:29,697 --> 00:19:31,258 Okay, okay. 231 00:19:31,258 --> 00:19:36,140 So, you know, with our show or with my... 232 00:19:37,040 --> 00:19:41,714 What I'm looking to understand is how are we building a low carbon 233 00:19:41,714 --> 00:19:46,775 future that's not just about solving climate change, but it actually like life gets better, right? 234 00:19:46,775 --> 00:19:53,637 Like to me, it's like if we're going to go through all the effort of what even what we're talking about with like solar and so we're going to do all this. 235 00:19:53,637 --> 00:19:56,488 Like it shouldn't in my mind, it shouldn't just be like, we don't die. 236 00:19:56,488 --> 00:19:59,179 That's, and that's also like a pretty bad marketing campaign, right? 237 00:19:59,179 --> 00:20:07,101 But it's like, no, like all that sci-fi or all that, whatever, like you think what the, what the future could be like, let's go do that. 238 00:20:07,101 --> 00:20:09,534 Not that it all has to be super sci-fi, but one of the 239 00:20:09,534 --> 00:20:25,974 We brought on, I brought on this other guy, Kyle Wagonchutes, and he caught my eye because I'd come across an article about him that he had figured out a way to get bike lanes built 240 00:20:25,974 --> 00:20:31,734 in cities three times faster than anybody else in the country. 241 00:20:31,734 --> 00:20:37,862 so the thought was like, like, yeah, know, bike lanes, most people want them, not everyone. 242 00:20:37,862 --> 00:20:39,023 Most people want them. 243 00:20:39,023 --> 00:20:42,375 do like enhance quality of life in the city. 244 00:20:42,375 --> 00:20:44,486 Good for commuting, good for health. 245 00:20:45,246 --> 00:20:47,928 But they're very hard to get built. 246 00:20:47,928 --> 00:20:49,649 so I reached out to this guy. 247 00:20:49,649 --> 00:20:50,830 was like, hey, I'd love to talk to you. 248 00:20:50,830 --> 00:21:00,836 And so it turned out he was kind of a bike advocate in Memphis, Tennessee, which was actually when he was there, the year before he actually went to work for the city for, 249 00:21:00,836 --> 00:21:05,338 well, two years running, I think it was like Bicycling Magazine. 250 00:21:05,513 --> 00:21:08,374 named Memphis the worst place to bike in America. 251 00:21:08,574 --> 00:21:15,034 And so this new mayor had come in and for whatever reason, Kyle got the job. 252 00:21:15,034 --> 00:21:17,814 He was like, I could have gone to any of me or any of my friends, but I got the job. 253 00:21:17,814 --> 00:21:21,674 And the mayor was like, you have one assignment, get Memphis off the list. 254 00:21:21,674 --> 00:21:26,734 And so he was like, great, know, let me go see if I can figure that out. 255 00:21:26,734 --> 00:21:27,974 And so he started to figure it out. 256 00:21:27,974 --> 00:21:29,314 He got Memphis off the list. 257 00:21:29,314 --> 00:21:31,194 They started to build some bike lanes. 258 00:21:31,194 --> 00:21:32,814 They started to get some infrastructure. 259 00:21:33,650 --> 00:21:36,972 The White House recognized him in 2015 as like a champion of change. 260 00:21:36,972 --> 00:21:46,917 And then you got this opportunity, I think with People for Bikes, this national organization that promotes bike riding, to go do work on this assignment with New Orleans, 261 00:21:46,917 --> 00:21:52,020 Denver, Pittsburgh, Providence, and I think Austin, Texas, five cities. 262 00:21:53,061 --> 00:21:54,822 Could they speed up bike lanes? 263 00:21:54,822 --> 00:21:57,783 Could they get these things actually built? 264 00:21:57,783 --> 00:21:59,264 so we brought them, and then they did it. 265 00:21:59,264 --> 00:22:00,895 They built like, it would take decades. 266 00:22:00,895 --> 00:22:03,126 They built hundreds of miles in like 24. 267 00:22:03,164 --> 00:22:05,294 And so I brought him on the show, was like, how'd you do it? 268 00:22:05,294 --> 00:22:05,415 Right? 269 00:22:05,415 --> 00:22:11,185 And he's like, well, he's like, there's a lot of things that we tried, but like really what you have to do is you have to build a tent. 270 00:22:11,185 --> 00:22:16,738 You have to build a bigger, like broader coalition of the willing and support. 271 00:22:16,738 --> 00:22:23,320 And what you don't really need to spend a lot of time on are all the obvious people who obviously want bike, like bike riders. 272 00:22:23,320 --> 00:22:25,901 You don't talk to any, any cyclists, right? 273 00:22:25,901 --> 00:22:31,632 What you need to go do is convince all the car drivers who are never going to ride a bike. 274 00:22:31,698 --> 00:22:34,258 that this is something that's in their self-interest too. 275 00:22:34,258 --> 00:22:35,861 I was like, okay, well, how do you do that? 276 00:22:35,861 --> 00:22:38,343 And he's like, well, you know, we try a bunch of things, right? 277 00:22:38,343 --> 00:22:46,799 Because if you can get them to say, yeah, like we want this, then you're generally gonna like smooth the wheels of like city hall, right? 278 00:22:46,799 --> 00:22:57,198 And like, you won't get stuck with meetings where people are showing up and like putting a cog in the wheel to be like, hey, you know, not so fast and everything grinds to all. 279 00:22:57,198 --> 00:22:58,448 So he's like, well. 280 00:22:58,556 --> 00:23:01,577 He's like, the thing that actually worked the most was appealing to nostalgia. 281 00:23:01,577 --> 00:23:09,599 Do you remember when you were growing up, when streets were a little bit slower and people could play outside and streets were shared with bikes and other most, and it just was 282 00:23:09,599 --> 00:23:17,031 like, and it was just a more, you know, welcoming, you knew your neighbors and it was more, and so they started building these types of campaigns and found that they could 283 00:23:17,031 --> 00:23:18,852 actually convince a lot of people's minds. 284 00:23:18,852 --> 00:23:26,974 They built that, like, you know, so they built that bigger kind of tent of like who was in support with some unexpected people. 285 00:23:27,152 --> 00:23:30,953 And he's like, that was really one of the keys to getting the thing through. 286 00:23:30,953 --> 00:23:33,208 So I found that pretty interesting. 287 00:23:34,001 --> 00:23:35,932 Yeah, that's actually extremely fascinating to me. 288 00:23:35,932 --> 00:23:46,045 I lived in Portland, Oregon for a decade, which I think for a lot of cities has kind of looked as the biking Mecca and trying to like what can be done, but it's been interesting 289 00:23:46,045 --> 00:23:53,777 because even, I don't live there anymore, but even over the past few years, it it's they've run into funding issues and all sorts of things to that have kind of been pulling 290 00:23:53,777 --> 00:24:01,745 back the cover, kind of this, not, wouldn't say necessarily the support, but how efficient like their implementation of biking has been. 291 00:24:01,745 --> 00:24:02,966 And that's a really interesting thing. 292 00:24:02,966 --> 00:24:10,248 Cause I think they've probably done the opposite of that and kind of overly weighted towards what the bike riders want. 293 00:24:10,248 --> 00:24:18,722 And so that actually does kind of, I think this was even a thing when I lived there kind of does create that tension between people who don't want to deal with that or don't ride 294 00:24:18,722 --> 00:24:29,596 or commute in the city versus like, what, what are the people that either probably won't ever bike, but are have a maybe potentially shared interest in like, how do you get them 295 00:24:29,596 --> 00:24:31,443 on board and how do you. 296 00:24:31,443 --> 00:24:37,136 create that kind of coalition to like execute and make it happen, which that's that's really interesting here. 297 00:24:37,136 --> 00:24:38,718 I hadn't heard that before. 298 00:24:39,141 --> 00:24:40,021 What? 299 00:24:41,406 --> 00:24:42,062 Yeah. 300 00:24:42,062 --> 00:24:44,122 And it was People for Bikes that ran this. 301 00:24:44,122 --> 00:24:45,942 I think it was called the Final Mile was the campaign. 302 00:24:45,942 --> 00:24:51,782 So now CityThread is doing this for cities on a regular rotation now where they're bringing companies to do this. 303 00:24:51,782 --> 00:25:03,422 And I think the piece that's really exciting about that is it's just saying, how do we be really level-headed and practical and take the steps that are just going to lead to what 304 00:25:03,422 --> 00:25:05,582 the end result is we all want? 305 00:25:05,582 --> 00:25:07,730 Let's just go figure out that playbook. 306 00:25:07,730 --> 00:25:14,053 Let's set aside our ideologies or our like, you know, us first them or whatever. 307 00:25:14,053 --> 00:25:20,076 Let's just go figure out what is it really gonna take just to move forward and do it as quickly as possible. 308 00:25:20,076 --> 00:25:20,903 So I love that. 309 00:25:20,903 --> 00:25:23,100 You know, I love, I love solutions like that. 310 00:25:23,100 --> 00:25:32,058 something we really try to kind of shoot for on the podcast is as much as possible, avoid the politics and just kind of like look at the facts or explore different ways of trying 311 00:25:32,058 --> 00:25:32,718 to make that happen. 312 00:25:32,718 --> 00:25:33,699 So I guess I'm curious. 313 00:25:33,699 --> 00:25:37,633 That's that's a really fascinating take on the bike. 314 00:25:37,633 --> 00:25:39,164 Are there any others like that you can share? 315 00:25:39,164 --> 00:25:45,849 Because I think that's a really interesting experience to have someone approach it from a completely different way. 316 00:25:46,460 --> 00:25:58,905 Well, so I guess, so this actually, what's triggering for me, this goes back to our first episode because I felt like what's exciting to me is to think about, and I've thought 317 00:25:58,905 --> 00:26:09,219 about this for years, years ago I had this TV show called The Lazy Environmentalist, it was this like reality TV show and I go around trying to help lazy Americans go green 318 00:26:09,219 --> 00:26:10,590 without working very hard. 319 00:26:10,590 --> 00:26:15,562 so of course I'm always thinking about like, how am I gonna like position this so you, 320 00:26:16,520 --> 00:26:20,693 customer, homeowner, whoever see this in your self-interest, it works for you. 321 00:26:20,734 --> 00:26:30,533 And one of the things that I've always thought was really interesting is this research that looks at like hospitals and says, okay, people in hospitals, if you're in a 322 00:26:30,533 --> 00:26:42,210 recovering room where you have access to more daylight, if you can see nature out your window, study exercises, you're gonna recover faster, better. 323 00:26:43,322 --> 00:26:45,014 That's just like amazing to me, right? 324 00:26:45,014 --> 00:26:46,045 Cause daylighting, great. 325 00:26:46,045 --> 00:26:47,794 Daylighting is like a green building strategy. 326 00:26:47,794 --> 00:26:51,660 You don't have to turn the lights on as much, but like it also enhances, you know, quality of life for people in the building. 327 00:26:51,660 --> 00:27:03,931 And so we found this, healthcare system, Gunderson health systems, which is headquartered in Wisconsin and with cross in La Crosse, Wisconsin has a footprint, in several states in 328 00:27:03,931 --> 00:27:05,362 the, in the Midwest. 329 00:27:06,283 --> 00:27:09,326 Over, I want to say right around the, 330 00:27:09,538 --> 00:27:13,401 maybe right after the financial recession or the Great Recession or maybe going into it. 331 00:27:13,401 --> 00:27:23,388 can't quite remember now, the CEO, think it was during that moment where the CEO realized like, you know what? 332 00:27:23,608 --> 00:27:24,779 We've got all these buildings. 333 00:27:24,779 --> 00:27:26,750 We've got this big footprint. 334 00:27:27,451 --> 00:27:37,237 What we really need to do is cut our energy costs and we need to cut our carbon because that's pollution in the 335 00:27:37,896 --> 00:27:39,427 cities where we operate. 336 00:27:40,028 --> 00:27:55,511 We are the local health provider and as a health provider, we have an obligation to try and make the air as clean as possible and we have a responsibility as the operators, we 337 00:27:55,511 --> 00:27:58,764 gotta bring our costs down so we can deliver the best healthcare at the cheapest price. 338 00:27:58,764 --> 00:28:03,398 And so he had this small team of engineers who was like, go figure it out. 339 00:28:03,398 --> 00:28:05,069 That's your mandate, go figure it out. 340 00:28:05,069 --> 00:28:06,120 Go figure out. 341 00:28:06,120 --> 00:28:11,911 whatever, if we got to change the energy, how do we, and so this team was kind of empowered by the CEO. 342 00:28:11,992 --> 00:28:21,394 And in a matter of year, I think less than a decade, maybe half a decade, they got to 100 % renewable energy for their healthcare system. 343 00:28:21,394 --> 00:28:31,563 And they did it by like going to the local brewery and saying, hey, you're flaring a lot of, you know, it looks like methane or you're flaring something coming off your, you know, 344 00:28:31,563 --> 00:28:33,197 the pipes of your brewery. 345 00:28:33,197 --> 00:28:36,154 What if we grab that and run a pipe? 346 00:28:36,154 --> 00:28:39,696 and get that going into our buildings for heat. 347 00:28:39,696 --> 00:28:43,238 Or like, you guys are the local dairy. 348 00:28:43,338 --> 00:28:52,423 We could actually take these cows and we could actually put a biodigester out here and we could also take this gas and use that. 349 00:28:52,423 --> 00:28:54,765 Let's go do economic development. 350 00:28:54,765 --> 00:29:03,560 Let's go figure this out in a way where we're going to empower our communities, boost the economies, cut our carbon, and get to the zero carbon footprint, save a lot of money. 351 00:29:03,560 --> 00:29:04,770 And they figured it out. 352 00:29:05,170 --> 00:29:11,478 And the way he described it, was like, I was like, dude, you're working for a healthcare company, but you're like, what? 353 00:29:11,478 --> 00:29:18,117 You're like a wind energy developer now, and you're like, you guys are developing all these patents on these different processes. 354 00:29:18,117 --> 00:29:21,792 He's like, yeah, you know, that's just because this is how we fulfilled our health mandate. 355 00:29:21,792 --> 00:29:24,184 And I was like, I love that. 356 00:29:24,497 --> 00:29:25,787 Yeah, that's wild. 357 00:29:25,848 --> 00:29:35,233 And I think that's really interesting because I've I mean, I've always found that there's such a big disconnect with kind of headlines and where things are going and like the 358 00:29:35,233 --> 00:29:38,554 stories of people like that who are doing really interesting things. 359 00:29:38,715 --> 00:29:49,150 And one of the things we try to focus on the podcast is just like, once again, kind of taking apart and looking at the the facts and kind of the things to be optimistic about. 360 00:29:49,150 --> 00:29:51,952 mean, like that number of 62 percent with battery. 361 00:29:51,952 --> 00:29:53,453 I mean, that's a huge delta. 362 00:29:53,453 --> 00:29:54,479 And that's a lot of 363 00:29:54,479 --> 00:29:59,360 solar energy that's now being saved in batteries instead of just not going to anything. 364 00:29:59,440 --> 00:30:09,683 And hearing that about the healthcare company that's now got all these patents and doing this kind of completely different thing from their business model being high impact. 365 00:30:09,944 --> 00:30:19,636 And so I'm kind of curious with someone who started your own company, Planet, and now doing this, what are some of the things I'm sure you probably have friends to sometimes 366 00:30:19,636 --> 00:30:22,437 like get either cop on the headlines or like the negativity? 367 00:30:22,755 --> 00:30:28,497 What are some of the ways that you kind of focus on like the things to stay positive about when people? 368 00:30:28,858 --> 00:30:29,778 Aren't unfortunate. 369 00:30:29,778 --> 00:30:37,741 I mean, it's great what you guys are doing and obviously people listening It's in today's show notes but like getting that word out there about the actual things happening versus 370 00:30:37,741 --> 00:30:43,043 like The biases or other things that just really don't align with what you're saying 371 00:30:43,706 --> 00:30:57,155 Yeah, I wish there was some secret that we knew other than the same thing that you do, just the hard work, the passion you try and build your audience. 372 00:30:57,556 --> 00:31:04,260 We do the podcast, just for us, we do our newsletter, which is, the newsletter is growing very rapidly. 373 00:31:04,486 --> 00:31:11,625 I think that, one, yeah, so we're living in a moment where most of the... 374 00:31:12,082 --> 00:31:17,835 the stories are, unfortunately, stories are negative, Or just we live, right? 375 00:31:17,835 --> 00:31:21,848 The social media is just tends to have this negative bias, people that kind of gets clicks. 376 00:31:21,848 --> 00:31:26,810 And so you're coming along, saying, hey, here's innovation, here's this really cool thing. 377 00:31:26,931 --> 00:31:36,396 And I think the challenge is even for someone who's might be interested in that and open to that, it's just like brand marketing. 378 00:31:36,396 --> 00:31:39,176 I've got to tell you the same thing seven times. 379 00:31:39,176 --> 00:31:39,608 Right. 380 00:31:39,608 --> 00:31:46,060 it actually like, you know, often right before it actually registers and you're like, wait, what are you doing? 381 00:31:46,060 --> 00:31:46,880 What are you doing? 382 00:31:46,880 --> 00:31:47,189 Right. 383 00:31:47,189 --> 00:31:48,479 And then the seventh time it's like, cool. 384 00:31:48,479 --> 00:31:49,388 I'm going to go listen to her. 385 00:31:49,388 --> 00:31:51,061 I'm to go, you know, sign up for that. 386 00:31:51,061 --> 00:32:04,155 And so I, what we try to do is wrap these, you know, I think compelling business cases in cool narratives and then put compelling data around it. 387 00:32:04,155 --> 00:32:08,036 And usually a financial story since we, of course we live in 388 00:32:08,126 --> 00:32:14,771 a capitalist society where, know, dollars and cents kind of are, you know, very paramount on everyone's mind. 389 00:32:14,771 --> 00:32:25,858 And so we try and wrap the innovation in things that make it easy to digest, fun to digest and important for audiences, but based on what matters to them. 390 00:32:26,559 --> 00:32:30,441 You know, and that's, you know, that's our approach. 391 00:32:30,822 --> 00:32:31,452 It's working. 392 00:32:31,452 --> 00:32:32,493 Do we want to go faster? 393 00:32:32,493 --> 00:32:33,504 Always. 394 00:32:33,504 --> 00:32:35,795 So that's, that's, that's what I would say. 395 00:32:35,795 --> 00:32:37,666 I that's at least the playbook that we tried. 396 00:32:38,289 --> 00:32:38,959 No, that's great. 397 00:32:38,959 --> 00:32:47,591 with, I guess like, I would love to also just learn more about your previous business, if that's all right, because I think that that's such a fascinating thing. 398 00:32:48,862 --> 00:32:54,623 I think obviously solar is kind of the solar and there's a lot of things in the building world. 399 00:32:54,623 --> 00:32:55,984 That's kind of the sexy stuff. 400 00:32:55,984 --> 00:32:57,254 Like, I want to get that in my house. 401 00:32:57,254 --> 00:32:58,064 I want to get that. 402 00:32:58,064 --> 00:33:07,685 But there's so many other components that actually like are so key to, I think the saying I was saying was like, you could either spend $20,000. 403 00:33:07,685 --> 00:33:17,738 On solar or you could probably save 20,000 or you could spend $20,000 on just doing general home improvements and it'll be kind of either the same or even a bigger impact. 404 00:33:17,978 --> 00:33:22,599 And so I think a lot of these things just don't get, and I mean, I get it. 405 00:33:22,599 --> 00:33:25,540 Like one, it's the sexy thing to let go. 406 00:33:25,540 --> 00:33:32,078 can say when people walk by like, I got solar in my house now I'm doing all this stuff for the environment, but it's really, it's a lot harder to share. 407 00:33:32,078 --> 00:33:34,523 Like, I just put a bunch of insulation in my house or something. 408 00:33:34,523 --> 00:33:36,039 I'm trying to help the environment. 409 00:33:36,039 --> 00:33:38,593 when it's these things you can't easily see as much. 410 00:33:38,593 --> 00:33:47,079 So I just, I'd love to hear a little bit about just your experience in that industry, but also specifically like how you got involved with Planet and how that all kind of connects. 411 00:33:47,079 --> 00:33:48,009 yeah, thank you. 412 00:33:48,009 --> 00:34:01,192 So going back for about two decades, I've been a sustainably driven entrepreneur really since like 2004, 2005, I started this modern design, sustainable furniture company about 413 00:34:01,192 --> 00:34:02,307 20 years ago. 414 00:34:02,307 --> 00:34:07,731 And so, you know, same through line, always thinking like, how can I get consumers to be interested in sustainable products? 415 00:34:07,731 --> 00:34:11,113 me make them beautiful and modern and awesome. 416 00:34:11,113 --> 00:34:12,213 Maybe that'll work. 417 00:34:12,213 --> 00:34:13,918 Yeah, and it worked pretty well. 418 00:34:13,918 --> 00:34:15,458 And so it's kind of, been a through line. 419 00:34:15,458 --> 00:34:20,518 So I started my second modern design, sustainable furniture company. 420 00:34:20,618 --> 00:34:30,518 I want to say around 2018, 2019, I was living in Western North Carolina and North Carolina is traditionally like the furniture capital of the U S in some respects had been of the 421 00:34:30,518 --> 00:34:32,658 world in terms of manufacturing prowess. 422 00:34:32,658 --> 00:34:38,958 And so I, you know, so anyway, so I started this company and I'm going to localize all my production. 423 00:34:38,958 --> 00:34:43,738 were manufacturing this North Carolina using forest stewardship council certified plywood. 424 00:34:44,770 --> 00:34:49,534 you know, just anything we could do to localize and kind of like, affordability. 425 00:34:49,534 --> 00:34:54,537 And it was kind of like Ikea style, knock down flat pack, put it together yourself, but really kind of beautiful. 426 00:34:54,537 --> 00:35:01,501 And it was, it was fun, but, during the pandemic, I couldn't get material. 427 00:35:02,573 --> 00:35:03,753 we couldn't even make new product. 428 00:35:03,753 --> 00:35:06,645 mean, eventually our business started to get really, really at first it was great. 429 00:35:06,645 --> 00:35:10,428 Everyone's buying desks and that was good, but then we just started to get impacted. 430 00:35:10,428 --> 00:35:14,050 And the biggest thing that was impacting me and I started thinking a lot about was material. 431 00:35:14,330 --> 00:35:17,831 And I thought, okay, I'm paying a lot for this plywood. 432 00:35:17,831 --> 00:35:21,922 It's supposedly the best you can buy from an environmental standpoint. 433 00:35:21,922 --> 00:35:25,353 It had been high quality, but the quality was going down, the price was going up. 434 00:35:25,353 --> 00:35:34,296 And I started thinking like, you know what, it's Forest Stewardship Council certified, but I'm not sure I really believe that actually does a whole heck of a... 435 00:35:34,296 --> 00:35:37,577 I'm not sure that that's like such a... 436 00:35:38,037 --> 00:35:41,828 I'm not fully bought in, even though like I know I'm supposed to be, I'm just not bought in. 437 00:35:41,872 --> 00:35:45,783 And so I was in this kind of period of questioning, thinking about material, feeling very frustrated. 438 00:35:45,783 --> 00:35:50,875 And I'd spent four years building, Asheville's startup community called Venture Asheville. 439 00:35:50,875 --> 00:35:53,345 was actually working with our Chamber of Commerce and our economic development group. 440 00:35:53,345 --> 00:35:54,316 And it was really, really fun. 441 00:35:54,316 --> 00:35:59,027 And so I knew a lot of folks in the area and someone was like, Hey, you should talk to this guy down in Durham, North Carolina. 442 00:35:59,027 --> 00:36:01,388 He's doing a little manufacturing thing too. 443 00:36:01,788 --> 00:36:09,372 Well, I looked at his site and I'm a very, it may come through and how I'm talking about my business, very focused on aesthetic and brand. 444 00:36:09,372 --> 00:36:12,903 And I was looking at his crappy little site and I was like, yeah, I don't need to talk to that guy. 445 00:36:12,903 --> 00:36:15,144 But that guy is very persistent. 446 00:36:15,144 --> 00:36:17,105 This guy Wada. 447 00:36:18,406 --> 00:36:19,966 So eventually he got in touch with me. 448 00:36:19,966 --> 00:36:24,488 We got on the phone and he started saying like, wow, imagine you're to build this great big furniture company. 449 00:36:24,488 --> 00:36:25,417 It's going to be eco-friendly. 450 00:36:25,417 --> 00:36:26,819 You're to do all this good for the world. 451 00:36:26,819 --> 00:36:28,922 And I was like, no, no, no, no. 452 00:36:28,922 --> 00:36:31,941 I'm like, if it gets big, I'll do wonderful things for me and my family. 453 00:36:31,941 --> 00:36:35,342 But no, I don't really think we're doing any particular good for the world. 454 00:36:35,342 --> 00:36:35,743 And he's like, why? 455 00:36:35,743 --> 00:36:37,513 I'm like, you know, this FSC thing. 456 00:36:37,513 --> 00:36:37,904 I don't know. 457 00:36:37,904 --> 00:36:39,388 It's still cutting down trees. 458 00:36:39,388 --> 00:36:40,719 And he's like, well, what would you do differently? 459 00:36:40,719 --> 00:36:44,202 I'm like, maybe I think we should build a materials company, maybe use something else. 460 00:36:44,202 --> 00:36:44,962 And he's like, what? 461 00:36:44,962 --> 00:36:48,765 I'm like, there's, I don't know, but there's hemp, there's this, there's that. 462 00:36:48,765 --> 00:36:53,469 And he was like, well, he's like, I got six giant trash bags of industrial hemp in my garage. 463 00:36:53,469 --> 00:36:54,649 And I was like, okay, hold on. 464 00:36:54,649 --> 00:36:56,000 Like, what's your deal? 465 00:36:56,000 --> 00:36:57,001 What's your deal, man? 466 00:36:57,001 --> 00:36:59,253 and he's like, well, I just moved here. 467 00:36:59,253 --> 00:37:04,737 spent, I just spent the last eight years at SpaceX and we just moved to Durham. 468 00:37:04,737 --> 00:37:06,658 And I was like, wait a second. 469 00:37:07,078 --> 00:37:11,472 you moved from California to North Carolina and you spent eight years working at Edson. 470 00:37:11,472 --> 00:37:12,243 Why? 471 00:37:12,243 --> 00:37:21,861 He's like, well, I put a spreadsheet together of all the places in the country to live, had my criteria and like Raleigh Durham kind of came to the top. 472 00:37:21,861 --> 00:37:22,852 We visited, we liked it. 473 00:37:22,852 --> 00:37:23,743 And so we moved here, right? 474 00:37:23,743 --> 00:37:25,374 Very engineer mindset. 475 00:37:25,395 --> 00:37:29,518 And so I was like, well, look, here's what I think we should do. 476 00:37:30,204 --> 00:37:31,495 I'm going to shut my company. 477 00:37:31,495 --> 00:37:35,327 think you should shut your company and we should go build a materials company together. 478 00:37:35,327 --> 00:37:39,739 And also, Elon Musk had just announced this XPRIZE for carbon removal. 479 00:37:39,739 --> 00:37:41,821 if you could, right? 480 00:37:41,821 --> 00:37:44,702 And so, and I'm like, we should figure out something that grows faster than trees. 481 00:37:44,702 --> 00:37:47,173 We should pull carbon out of the atmosphere and we should turn in the materials. 482 00:37:47,173 --> 00:37:48,624 And I think you and I should start this thing. 483 00:37:48,624 --> 00:37:51,410 And can you get more SpaceXers to come to North Carolina? 484 00:37:51,410 --> 00:37:54,948 And he was like, okay, yeah, let me think about that. 485 00:37:54,948 --> 00:37:57,869 So two weeks later, we basically started that company. 486 00:37:59,426 --> 00:38:10,223 So from the beginning, what we felt, so this was about four years ago, probably this time four years ago, March, 2021, we said, well, one, let's go talk to home builders and 487 00:38:10,223 --> 00:38:16,998 basically say, like, hey, like we're going to build something in a factory that's going to be engineered out of something equivalent to wood. 488 00:38:16,998 --> 00:38:19,669 What should we build and what's wrong with the things you got? 489 00:38:19,669 --> 00:38:24,286 So it was like immediately like, well, oriented strand boards is like the most widely used product in a house. 490 00:38:24,286 --> 00:38:25,386 Okay, well, what's wrong with it? 491 00:38:25,386 --> 00:38:28,106 Well, it's really like if it gets wet, you got big problems. 492 00:38:28,106 --> 00:38:29,586 We're like, okay, water resistance. 493 00:38:29,586 --> 00:38:30,486 You're like, anything else? 494 00:38:30,486 --> 00:38:34,946 Well, know, like, you know, fire, if it could be more, you'll have like greater fire retardation. 495 00:38:34,946 --> 00:38:35,886 Maybe that would be a good thing. 496 00:38:35,886 --> 00:38:36,686 This, that, okay, cool. 497 00:38:36,686 --> 00:38:38,826 Well, we got, we got some problems to solve. 498 00:38:38,826 --> 00:38:40,526 We got a SpaceX team. 499 00:38:40,566 --> 00:38:41,626 Let's go figure this out. 500 00:38:41,626 --> 00:38:44,546 And so eventually we started to figure it out all trial and error. 501 00:38:44,646 --> 00:38:48,826 And, um, but so the premise was let's go figure out something that grows faster than trees. 502 00:38:48,826 --> 00:38:49,810 start with hemp. 503 00:38:49,810 --> 00:38:59,398 Hemp was interesting, eventually we just thought, you know what, like the economics on hemp are not going to work if we're getting into this commodity OSB bottom of the barrel 504 00:38:59,398 --> 00:38:59,969 market, right? 505 00:38:59,969 --> 00:39:02,581 We need something that grows way faster than that. 506 00:39:02,581 --> 00:39:11,108 And so we found this grass similar to bamboo that will grow, you know, basically nine to 10 times faster than trees. 507 00:39:11,409 --> 00:39:14,161 And we got the permits to it in North Carolina. 508 00:39:14,161 --> 00:39:16,013 We started working with commercial farmers. 509 00:39:16,013 --> 00:39:18,032 SpaceX team came in, we built. 510 00:39:18,032 --> 00:39:23,576 a modular all electric production line that essentially can go in any warehouse in America. 511 00:39:23,576 --> 00:39:25,387 You just plug it in, there's no smoke stacks. 512 00:39:25,387 --> 00:39:32,942 So we're pulling carbon from the atmosphere with this grass and we're not giving it back in our manufacturing process because it's all electric. 513 00:39:32,942 --> 00:39:35,474 And so we get to carbon negativity. 514 00:39:35,474 --> 00:39:39,417 And early on in the process, we raised $2 million in our seed round in 2021. 515 00:39:39,417 --> 00:39:47,702 And then Deira Horton, we got introduced to them, largest home builder, and they put some money in and... 516 00:39:47,998 --> 00:39:55,598 gave us a pretty big order out of the gate and just this past fall gave us this order for 10 million panels, which is going to take us quite some time to actually fulfill. 517 00:39:55,598 --> 00:39:57,138 It's like 90,000 homes. 518 00:39:57,598 --> 00:40:01,018 So right place, right time, incredible team. 519 00:40:01,178 --> 00:40:02,638 It's pretty exciting business. 520 00:40:02,803 --> 00:40:10,545 Yeah, that's really fascinating because like living here in Oregon, mean, traditionally we'd been known as kind of the timber state and there's still quite a few sawmills, but 521 00:40:10,545 --> 00:40:14,126 it's definitely not to what it used to be even a couple of decades ago. 522 00:40:14,226 --> 00:40:25,829 And so I'm kind of curious, like, do you see this being just OSB or do you see it kind of expanding to like a lot more of the kind of the building products that this could kind of 523 00:40:25,829 --> 00:40:32,411 fill that gap for and to what size do you see it expanding outside of like North Carolina or? 524 00:40:32,551 --> 00:40:39,523 Do you see also the growing of the product being more regionalized as well, not just the manufacturing of it with the new product? 525 00:40:40,374 --> 00:40:46,186 The core technology that enables this is this continuous press, right? 526 00:40:46,186 --> 00:40:49,185 So we have grass, we cut it down. 527 00:40:49,185 --> 00:40:59,540 mean, it's like, quite like, I yeah, in some respects, you kind of like mow it, but it's, the reason why this works is because the grass has so much more, you're pressing so much 528 00:40:59,540 --> 00:41:03,231 more fiber than you are if you're doing a plywood or an oriented strand board, right? 529 00:41:03,231 --> 00:41:07,022 Where like you're pressing maybe three or four layers of fiber. 530 00:41:07,426 --> 00:41:12,267 we can press like 25 layers, give or take, of fiber. 531 00:41:12,267 --> 00:41:16,409 So when you can press that down, you get something that's much stronger. 532 00:41:16,409 --> 00:41:20,868 It happens to have really great water resistance characteristics. 533 00:41:20,868 --> 00:41:24,411 so imagine a press about 40 feet long. 534 00:41:24,471 --> 00:41:33,713 So you can build, you can create engineered pieces of wood that can become two by fours, that can become headers, can effectively, anything engineered in the house, can replace 535 00:41:33,713 --> 00:41:34,733 all of it. 536 00:41:35,094 --> 00:41:36,796 We're starting to do some development. 537 00:41:36,796 --> 00:41:38,427 development work in that regard. 538 00:41:38,427 --> 00:41:47,174 And because you can get these pieces that are 40 feet long, you can then start to think about mass timber or cross laminated timber replacement products. 539 00:41:47,755 --> 00:41:55,712 really, yeah, so the future from a production standpoint and product standpoint could be incredible. 540 00:41:55,712 --> 00:42:00,825 And so that work's starting to be done and the R &D is taking place. 541 00:42:01,607 --> 00:42:06,106 And then, there's a greater opportunity to expand for sure because it's a 542 00:42:06,106 --> 00:42:18,635 The key is, since it's a modular production system, maybe like 120 feet long, and we can put it in many different places, the key is to grow near that facility because there's a 543 00:42:18,635 --> 00:42:22,397 reason why OSB plants are in certain parts of the country. 544 00:42:22,397 --> 00:42:23,638 They have to be near the trees. 545 00:42:23,638 --> 00:42:28,861 If you have to transport trees really far, they're heavy, kills your business model. 546 00:42:29,082 --> 00:42:35,954 In some respects, we're working on understanding we may not have all of those constraints. 547 00:42:35,954 --> 00:42:43,480 But there's some, so we want to make sure that we can move our production and be close to really opportune places to grow. 548 00:42:43,835 --> 00:42:44,385 No, that's great. 549 00:42:44,385 --> 00:42:45,246 And it's interesting. 550 00:42:45,246 --> 00:42:50,980 You start talking about like cross slam and these other kinds of opportunities to replace existing wood. 551 00:42:51,055 --> 00:42:55,264 I mean, then you start getting into some like really serious structural needs for that. 552 00:42:55,264 --> 00:43:05,092 And how, does that kind of fit into like the testing of it and what the durability and how, I mean, yeah, I guess now my head's like spinning with all sorts. 553 00:43:05,092 --> 00:43:09,636 I mean, I'm just fascinated about this because I've just grown up with a lot of contractors and stuff. 554 00:43:09,676 --> 00:43:13,619 So, and so then my end question is like, how do you. 555 00:43:14,395 --> 00:43:21,080 Is there anything you really have to position this differently to like a contractor about like, this is the same as a regular two by four or yeah. 556 00:43:21,080 --> 00:43:24,963 So I, realize I just threw a lot at you, but I'm kind of curious about all of that. 557 00:43:25,789 --> 00:43:27,930 I appreciate all the questions. 558 00:43:28,490 --> 00:43:38,050 the vision and I'm going to imagine now, so I started this with guys from SpaceX who'd been there for a very long time, right? 559 00:43:38,050 --> 00:43:41,709 So I tend to have a lot of vision. 560 00:43:42,350 --> 00:43:50,510 Imagine like, they're not Elon Musk disciples, but imagine people who've been trained in the, like they went, right? 561 00:43:50,510 --> 00:43:54,810 First principles and went to SpaceX because they also want to go to Mars, right? 562 00:43:55,106 --> 00:44:05,899 So before going to Mars, the whole idea is we're not just going to replace lumber, we're not just going to replace trees, we're going to replace steel, we're going to replace 563 00:44:05,899 --> 00:44:17,452 concrete, we're going to build a material strong enough, light enough, durable enough that changes the economics for all built environment. 564 00:44:17,452 --> 00:44:20,153 And everyone at the company would tell you the same thing. 565 00:44:20,153 --> 00:44:23,034 That's the vision for the company. 566 00:44:23,218 --> 00:44:28,430 How do you get there from a, how do you build trust and confidence in that along the way? 567 00:44:28,430 --> 00:44:32,782 Yeah, we do a lot in terms of certification, third party certification. 568 00:44:32,782 --> 00:44:43,716 And I caveat all this to say we're just four years old and really, you know, working on serving our, you know, our first really big, you know, customer, happens to be a wonderful 569 00:44:43,716 --> 00:44:45,887 first customer with DR Horton. 570 00:44:46,628 --> 00:44:48,248 But we do a lot with certification. 571 00:44:48,248 --> 00:44:52,850 We do a lot with testing and there's still a lot to be proven out, but fundamentally, 572 00:44:54,079 --> 00:45:01,504 because of some of these just underlying dynamics just in terms of like, again, like how much fiber we're able to compress and some of the, you know, the features of this, this 573 00:45:01,504 --> 00:45:12,071 grass and keep in mind like this grass, it's, we tissue culture it, we greenhouse it, we put it in the fields or we bring it to the, who grow for us. 574 00:45:12,071 --> 00:45:19,096 So like what we realized was to actually do this because it's kind of, it might sound like it makes sense today. 575 00:45:19,096 --> 00:45:22,678 Maybe it does, or maybe you're saying, I don't know if this makes, four years ago. 576 00:45:22,874 --> 00:45:25,286 It really, you know, it took a lot of faith to buy it. 577 00:45:25,286 --> 00:45:32,261 So we realized like, man, if we want this, we're just going to have to be vertically integrated because no one's no one's going to do this with us, you know. 578 00:45:32,942 --> 00:45:42,310 But with that level of insight, you know, we do feel like this is a product that those certifications will come in and we're talking to, you know, commercial companies and big 579 00:45:42,310 --> 00:45:45,022 building and construction engineering companies. 580 00:45:45,022 --> 00:45:49,816 You know, it's always a tricky thing to break into that market in some respects. 581 00:45:50,397 --> 00:45:52,678 Home building, I don't know that it's actually easier. 582 00:45:53,695 --> 00:45:59,799 But there's fewer people who have to say yes. 583 00:45:59,799 --> 00:46:06,313 Big commercial construction with your architect and then the construction engineering agency and the client. 584 00:46:06,313 --> 00:46:08,154 There's a lot to break through there. 585 00:46:08,154 --> 00:46:12,086 But I do think I have the confidence too that we're going to. 586 00:46:13,017 --> 00:46:13,988 That's super fascinating. 587 00:46:13,988 --> 00:46:23,073 at a, I mean, you say it kind of grows like bamboo, but it looks, it's kind of more related to grass. 588 00:46:23,073 --> 00:46:26,305 I mean, if I saw a regular, I know what an OSB board looks like. 589 00:46:26,305 --> 00:46:28,296 If I see one of these, is it green? 590 00:46:28,296 --> 00:46:33,339 Cause it looks like gray or like, is there any like visual difference to it pretty substantially or? 591 00:46:34,256 --> 00:46:37,779 No, and in fact, so it's Plantd, it's P-L-A-N-T-D. 592 00:46:37,779 --> 00:46:47,477 And so for listeners who want to check it out, if you go to plantedmaterials.com or find us on social, you'll see installations where there's roofers holding these panels. 593 00:46:47,477 --> 00:46:53,982 And other than the fact that they have our branding on them, it looks like a regular OSB panel. 594 00:46:53,982 --> 00:47:03,990 And that also in some sense goes to the philosophy of the company, which is we know, kind of like how we started this conversation talking about, you 595 00:47:04,454 --> 00:47:06,955 solar or batteries or how do you gain adoption? 596 00:47:06,955 --> 00:47:15,657 In our market, we need to build a product that is a drop-in replacement for what builders use today. 597 00:47:15,657 --> 00:47:25,490 And no one should even know the difference that they're, or be able to even tell they're using something different, unless it's just a slightly better installation experience, 598 00:47:25,490 --> 00:47:30,681 because maybe it's a little bit lighter or maybe there's something about it that actually is better. 599 00:47:30,681 --> 00:47:33,722 But otherwise, no, I mean, it's designed to, 600 00:47:34,088 --> 00:47:43,214 to function, operate, look, but most importantly, install exactly the same as what builders are using today. 601 00:47:44,391 --> 00:47:44,994 No, that's great. 602 00:47:44,994 --> 00:47:47,362 mean, I actually just went. 603 00:47:49,859 --> 00:47:50,829 And yeah, you're totally right. 604 00:47:50,829 --> 00:48:01,489 mean, just looking at this, if I saw it at Home Depot or, pretty much any other kind of home building supply place, I would never even notice, that it looks really different from 605 00:48:01,489 --> 00:48:10,436 an OSB board or, even, don't, mean, I doubt most people would be even tell the difference from, plywood and stuff like that. 606 00:48:10,436 --> 00:48:11,286 So that that's great. 607 00:48:11,286 --> 00:48:13,861 So, I mean, I, I'm kind of looking. 608 00:48:13,861 --> 00:48:16,854 At the site and it, one of the things that mentions is it's stronger. 609 00:48:16,854 --> 00:48:19,316 And so that is due to the fibers. 610 00:48:19,316 --> 00:48:23,529 that also due to maybe kind of the pressing the way you press it? 611 00:48:23,529 --> 00:48:24,951 I'm just kind of curious. 612 00:48:24,951 --> 00:48:35,029 Cause I mean, that's great that like you said, it, if you're a builder, you really wouldn't notice much of a difference, but I've just even said on your side, it's stronger 613 00:48:35,029 --> 00:48:38,332 and kind like you said, more moisture resistant than obviously carbon negative two. 614 00:48:38,332 --> 00:48:40,884 And it's all kind of down for the same price. 615 00:48:40,885 --> 00:48:41,669 So I'm just. 616 00:48:41,669 --> 00:48:56,362 between the strength and maybe even like you were mentioning the fire suppression and those kinds of things like is that is it a mixture of your of using the grass or is it 617 00:48:56,362 --> 00:49:05,509 that plus kind of some of the material sciences that you guys are using for kind of bringing this all together or just a mixture of things 618 00:49:06,078 --> 00:49:21,438 There's definitely a bit of secret sauce in there beyond simply pressing fiber, but it's not built on, let's go pump this thing full of a high percentage of adhesives and 619 00:49:21,438 --> 00:49:26,858 therefore we'll just use more toxic crap in there and it'll just have strength, right? 620 00:49:26,858 --> 00:49:28,238 Because there's more glue. 621 00:49:28,758 --> 00:49:30,738 It's the opposite of that. 622 00:49:31,358 --> 00:49:36,238 So yeah, so there is some secret sauce in the engineering of how we do it. 623 00:49:36,722 --> 00:49:40,193 But otherwise than that, it's largely based on the principles that I told you. 624 00:49:40,193 --> 00:49:43,103 We are the only ones building this supply chain in America. 625 00:49:43,103 --> 00:49:52,877 And that was one of the tricks too around the grass was we had to say, okay, well, if actually going to, if we're gonna use it, we have to figure out how we stand up a supply 626 00:49:52,877 --> 00:49:53,527 chain to do it. 627 00:49:53,527 --> 00:50:03,010 It had been looked at probably now about a decade ago, maybe a little bit more as a potential replacement of. 628 00:50:03,272 --> 00:50:11,267 torn from biofuels because these growth rates are so extraordinary, but none of those projects ever materialized. 629 00:50:11,267 --> 00:50:22,183 so, yeah, was kind of, we were looking everywhere at everything, every type, and we just eventually started looking at kind of the grass family stumbled onto something through a 630 00:50:22,183 --> 00:50:30,750 lot of research trial and error and just sometimes a little bit of dumb luck and then just made the decision to go for it. 631 00:50:30,750 --> 00:50:41,970 You know, sometimes with startups, what I've found is we were really all in on hemp for about six months and we were building little boards and testing and in some respects, 632 00:50:42,230 --> 00:50:43,470 we're starting this business. 633 00:50:43,470 --> 00:50:45,610 It's a crazy idea to take. 634 00:50:45,610 --> 00:50:47,270 Everybody has a hard time. 635 00:50:47,270 --> 00:50:48,910 Most everyone has a hard time raising money. 636 00:50:48,910 --> 00:50:50,710 was hard for us. 637 00:50:50,710 --> 00:50:59,388 It took a long time to find investors, but had we gotten the money earlier, we probably would, you we might've made a decision to go down the path of hemp. 638 00:50:59,388 --> 00:51:00,979 And that would have been a dead end. 639 00:51:00,979 --> 00:51:04,552 And so sometimes these things align in a way that you can't always predict, right? 640 00:51:04,552 --> 00:51:09,346 Where we got more breathing room to really make sure we had the right solution to go all. 641 00:51:10,151 --> 00:51:11,512 No, that's super fascinating, Josh. 642 00:51:11,512 --> 00:51:16,837 And I think we could probably talk about that for its own podcast, but I realized we're kind of coming up on the time today. 643 00:51:16,837 --> 00:51:20,290 So yeah, we'll have links to all of that in today's show notes. 644 00:51:20,290 --> 00:51:29,007 But I mean, for anyone who's curious, what what's the best way either to connect with you or learn more about what you are doing with Planet or at super cool. 645 00:51:29,406 --> 00:51:30,486 Absolutely. 646 00:51:30,606 --> 00:51:35,926 So get super cool is the place to find what we're doing around the podcast and using the weather. 647 00:51:35,926 --> 00:51:38,426 Soon you can find us on social. 648 00:51:38,606 --> 00:51:42,886 I'm easy to connect with them on LinkedIn, quite a lot of where you can find me. 649 00:51:42,886 --> 00:51:46,266 Plantd is planted materials.com. 650 00:51:46,406 --> 00:51:49,506 Of course, we'd love for your listeners to check out that as well. 651 00:51:49,866 --> 00:51:54,226 yeah, I appreciate, know, this is a really, for me, it's a great opportunity to speak to you. 652 00:51:54,226 --> 00:51:55,666 I really enjoyed the conversation. 653 00:52:00,791 --> 00:52:03,732 Thanks for tuning in to this week's Grid Connections podcast. 654 00:52:03,732 --> 00:52:11,574 We hope Josh Dorfman's insights on carbon negative building materials and consumer friendly climate innovations left you feeling inspired and ready to explore new solutions 655 00:52:11,574 --> 00:52:13,114 for a cleaner future. 656 00:52:13,175 --> 00:52:16,816 Don't forget to share this episode with at least one friend who did love it as well. 657 00:52:16,816 --> 00:52:20,153 And please leave us a Ponds review on your favorite podcast platform. 658 00:52:20,153 --> 00:52:22,917 It makes a huge difference in growing our community. 659 00:52:22,957 --> 00:52:29,619 Also be sure to sign up for our brand new newsletter via the link in the show notes for the latest updates on electrification, green tech and more. 660 00:52:29,845 --> 00:52:33,489 If you'll be at the EV Charging Summit Expo in Las Vegas next week, let's connect. 661 00:52:33,489 --> 00:52:36,462 I'll be there recording a couple of on-site episodes. 662 00:52:36,603 --> 00:52:43,051 Because of the event, I will only be dropping one new podcast this week and likely one next week as well, just FYI. 663 00:52:43,051 --> 00:52:46,696 But stay tuned for fresh insights straight from the Expo floor. 664 00:52:46,696 --> 00:52:49,599 With that, this is The Great Connections Podcast signing off.