Leadership in Clean Energy

know, who will my friends be in high school, which group I’ll hang with, who will I choose to marry? Shall I purse in college or in work? And how do you arrive at those things? It is oftentimes, okay so I’m gonna say never, I’m careful when I say ‘always’ or ‘never’, I would venture to say it’s never a straight path. It’s this winding path of decisions that you make and the decisions that you make ultimately shape your destination or your destiny, right? So my wife got a full-ride to get her grad degree in Geology on the big island of Hawaii because she was a geologist and Manalo and Montokaya were erupting. It’s a once in a lifetime things and I believe at the time the big island of Hawaii was growing by 56 acres a year. It was the newest earth on the planet, right? And I was like ‘are you nuts we’re not moving to Hawaii! We’re from Montana, we’re cowboys, we’re so not moving to Hawaii.’ And she’s like ‘Montokaya is erupting and it’s flowing and they’re going to give me a full-ride’. So, you know, a couple sleepless nights and then you think, you know, somebody saying I’m going to change my life, they don’t unfortunately, potentially use most times, or I’m going to live my dream and oftentimes they don’t. I just thought how often does somebody get to live their dream? Of course we’re going, alright, of course we’re going! So you pack all your stuff into a mass container and you ship it to Hawaii and you do that. There was not a lot for me to do there, But, after her graduation ceremony, she was killed in an auto accident by a drunk driver…”

 

Allison: “Oh my gosh..”

 

B.D.: “Right? So right as we’re ready to start, there’s no start…”

 

Allison: “Ugh, I’m so sorry that’s horrible.”

 

B.D.: “So, it’s me and my son, it’s me and little guy now. So after eight months maybe, in a total trance, I’m like ‘what do you want to do?’ and he’s like ‘let’s get out of here,’ and I’m like ‘let’s get out of here!’ He said ‘everything reminds me of my mom, everything reminds me of mom!’ So we came back to Montana where we could be closer to everybody, and I had to start a business. Well what I had been doing in Hawaii since we didn’t have a big customer base there, I would sell a very expensive high-tech lighting system, lightbulbs and lights to the Middle East. We sold them in the Middle East because electricity is expensive so it made sense to sell this high-efficiency lightbulb. In the US, electricity is cheap, people don’t care, and people told me there’s no market really in the US, people go into Walmart or Walgreens, they grab the cheapest light bulb possible, that’s not really an item that they shop for, they simply grab to replace, maybe a color or a brightness that they like, that’s the limit to their shopping, there’s no market for it. I said I believe that there is a market for people that want something better. With the limited market, I think it might be high-end, I can do it. Okay, so anyway, he and I buy a house kind of in a haste, it fits our needs, and short time into living there, he and I are on the deck and we realize that the biggest power lines in Missoula, Montana go right through our backyard. And, Allison, my son and I look at each other like ‘did you see those?’, and he’s like ‘I didn’t see those’, so we giggled it away. Now, there’s something in your being, nobody has to tell you this, do you want your house under power lines? No, you don’t, right? Let me ask you this, Allison, do you want the cell tower on the roof of your house? No, you don’t! There is something inside of us that says that those things are bad, right? Well, we lived there for a year, and his first year it’s regular guy, straight-A’s which is all he had gotten, perfect attendance, he had perfect attendance the last two years in Hawaii, and the following year he does not have perfect attendance. He’s sickly, his grades are dropping, he’s not him, he’s restless, he’s anxious, and so I think it’s me, you know, that I’m not delivering for him. He’s missing mom, she was the best mom ever, and it’s me and I’m not the best dad ever and I’m failing my guy. That hurts, I mean you want some restless nights and cry some soggy tears that’s it, right? So I begin to Google, I begin to be my own doctor and that’s something we do nowadays, like ah my elbow hurts what do you do? You Google it! So this is pretty early in all that but I start looking at his symptoms, and his symptoms, one two three down the line are EHS, Electrohypersensitivity. My son was ultra-sensitive to the pollution, the e-pollution if you will, that comes from an electrified world. So we’re living in the same house and I’m not as susceptible to this form of pollution, he is. Within another year, and I’m starting to deduce all of this, it doesn’t happen overnight, anxiety, crushing anxiety, fearful sometimes to even leave his room, this guy is like his dad he’s a gregarious, funny, loving, out-going, he was student of the month for holding the door for some of the handicapped and special needs kids because that’s just his personality, right? I think he walked on fire 15-feet for the first time when he was 12! You know, this is my guy and he’s suffering that. So, I began down this journey of electric pollution. Is it real? Are you wearing a foil hat? Psycho-soma. Some things are and that’s real, there are some things that you think about, you can manifest in illness if you believe them to be true for you, right? So you think about those things and I realized that the grass is dead all the way under the power lines either side. Well, I’ve got a science degree, well maybe the trucks that put the lines up crushed it down, maybe gas or something was spilling out of the truck, maybe it wasn’t the electricity. So then I started investigating is the grass under power lines equal bushier or bushiless, Allison, and I was able to prove definitively that it’s bushiless, if not dead completely. So you have to be careful what you say what’s good for people and what’s bad for people because the FDA and all that so I’m very careful not to say, I love my career path and I don’t want to get in trouble, but you can talk about cows. It has been well documented Marigold, Dairygold, I mean, there’s big money in dairy, right? We’re talking about cheese, butter, milk, ice cream, ice cream is delicious, yogurt, and they’ve well documented that the quality, size, production, amount of dairy cow’s milk is in fact affected by dirty electricity. Grows, greenhouses, strawberries, ganja, you name it, plants grow towards the light, the water, the nutrition, right? They’re biological, they’re alive, right? And they grow away from dirty electricity. So without something that will get me in trouble, for my person it is beyond contestation that this form of pollution is detrimental to the biological. So I know that I’m not grass, I’m not a cow, but I am biological and I’m incredibly complex and I’m very sensitive, so these things do have an effect. So, looping around here for a minute, forgive me for just ranting on you, what made our lightbulb great was its very efficient conversion of watts, which is the electricity that you buy, into lights, into lumens, and a very small portion of it was wasted as heat or distortion, and these things now are, distortion and heat, are what cause dirty electricity. So now I had to use my leadership skills because now I’m wearing a foil hat and people are like ‘boy I love you but I don’t know if that’s the path you want to go down.’ And so I built an all-star cast of engineers, I have PhD mathematician, I have a PhD physicist, I have a PhD engineer from MIT, and then I had to get buy-in, right?, and get everyone working together and lead them on a path and invent something that for the most part didn’t exist in a sector that is pseudo-science. And now we are the leaders in the field and 85,000 wired in installed customers and tens of millions of dollars later, we get to serve and play a bigger game.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

top one of two tips, what would say right now? I understand that they’re coming out of the pandemic, many of them have been in survival mode, they have probably dealt with pivoting their business or their organization in ways they thought would never happen, what would you say to them What would that message be?”

 

B.D.: “So business school teaches you it’s your money, are you over-capitalized? What’s your market? Know your demographic and your ability to reach them, and what’s the timing? I would say ‘Ehhh..’ to that. I think instead it’s the ability to get great buy-in from your team, to get everyone focused on the same goal, the same picture, the same vision, I’m gonna get real corny on you, Allison, I’m gonna start drawing that from the quantum field because the law of attraction is absolutely real, we manifest it every single day, so one of the first things we do is that we get our vision boards out and we draw it. What does it look like? What does it smell like? What does it taste like? What does it feel like when we finally get there? How are we going to feel when we’re finally there and we’re experiencing it? What can each of us do that we’re good at and that we enjoy and that has value and can get us closer to the goal? I tell everybody nearly every day ‘ I know you could be a lot of different places, thank you so much for being here and for helping me’, number one I can’t do it alone, number two I don’t want to do it alone. If it happens for me it will happen for you. And as company revenues grow, we give raises approximately every six months, every human here gets a raise, we do stock options, I’m always very careful to communicate to them that people want to come in and buy our corporation and do things and how it would affect them and I let them know that I will never make a decision for me, I will always make a decision for us, and that whatever happens for me will happen for them, but in a way that we all decide together. And then people will say well how do you find these great people? How do you recruit and headhunt these people? And oftentimes I find people that want to believe and want to share, contribute and add value. We’ve all said it but we forget it, it’s not about the money, you have to have some, man you want to be loved, you want to be heard, you want to matter, you want your input to count, you want your work to count, make sure they know it counts! And sometimes we get into our own head and yeah I really love you and I really appreciate you, do you tell them? Man, do you high-five them? Do you hug them and look them in the eyes and tell them? And a lot of times people say ‘how do you identify this great person?’ I don’t! It’s in there! I help drag it out. I don’t identify it, it’s in everyone, man! It’s in there! You have to drag it out so you have to find out are they auditory, visual or kinestitic? What are their needs? Have you sat down with them and really asked them what their needs are? Most leaders don’t. I do all the time! In fact we sit down every year and say have your needs changed? I mean if somebody says ‘you know what boss, I need to go live on an island. It’s been on my list I’ve gotta do it’ and I say alright, how do we get you there? Are you talking about tomorrow? Six months? A year? What are we looking at? Let’s get you there. You know, I really need to learn how to play the ukulele, okay alright, can you do that here? Do you need to go? What do you need to happen? So that everybody feels safe, and then during it, is there something here that you hate? Is there something here that you love? Is there a feeling that you need to experience that I’m missing? Because by golly, if you need a feeling, if it’s within my power or the team’s power to help you experience that feeling, we’re going to help you experience it. And one of the things about leadership too that people think leadership is out in front, no it’s not! You go first the first time to show them that it doesn’t kill them, that you don’t fall into a pit of fire and the tigers don’t tear you asunder, you go first a couple of times, then you say ‘okay you saw me do it, it doesn’t kill us, now you’ve gotta go and it’s gotta be you.’ And then I’ll tell you, Allison, you get to see what God made, you get to see that beautiful little spark inside of them that you’d never got to see if you hadn’t pushed them and allowed to go. And then some people really like that role, it’s not for everybody, but some people like that role, and if they do like that role then you say okay drag others along with you but don’t forget, once you show them it doesn’t kill them, it’s not about you and you have to push them. So one of my sayings, we all have a quote or two, one of mine is ‘Don’t pass the torch, light more torches’.

 

Allison: “Hmmmmmm, that’s beautiful! I love that! And I love how you have the perspective of leadership of really number one valuing the people around you and seeing their strengths and amplifying their strengths, and then also being a leader who is not afraid to go and be a part of the team. It sounds like you’re one of those people who are very hands on and wants to be working with your people. A lot of times when we look at corporations, there’s a division between their leadership team and the teams that are doing “the work” right? And I think that division causes a separation, and so what would you say to a large corporation that has this leadership team or this executive team and then has people that are out doing the work that are out on the field, how would you say to bridge that gap?”

 

B.D.: “Number one if you hold that space they’re afraid of you, they’re uncertain of you, they cringe, whether you see it or not, they cringe because they are not sure about their relationship with you. If we’re on a job site and we’re installing solar and that’s not my main role. Is my main role digging holes? No, but I do them sometimes, and I like to be out there with the guys. And when I’m out there and, you know, we’re humping panels up onto a roof, I’m not the boss, the lead installer is the boss and he gets to bark at me and he gets to boss me around just like everyone else. You know why? That’s his job, that’s his career path, he’s friggin great at it, that’s why he’s the lead installer for the number one solar company in the state of Montana. Is that a place where I need to have my big nose in it? No! And then I’m telling you when other people see you humping the panel up the ladder, it changes them, and then, you know, you hear the other side of it, ‘well, familiarity breeds contempt’. I think that’s misused and in a different place, people love to see you not being afraid to get dirty, people love to see you working alongside them and not thinking that you’re better than them, and people love to see you vulnerable. Every CEO needs to read a book by Brene Brown tomorrow, right? Tomorrow! ‘Daring Greatly’ or one of those about how, and one of the reasons I love Brene Brown’s work because I like a book that has a story, is well narrated and has a lesson. That’s how I get down, and you know I devour a book or two a month of Audible. And one of the things on her style is that she owns her vulnerability, she doesn’t try to be perfect but is also brilliant. And I think that is just what makes you fall in love with people and that’s a leader you’ll go anywhere with, and if you have a leader where they think they are above you, and doesn’t care about you, you’re going to follow them that far. That’s great Simon Sinek right there, right? Where if your leader loves you, cares about you, is worried about you, and if a real leader says ‘man this is dangerous’, I’ll tell you what, a poor leader says ‘this is dangerous, you go do it’, a leader would say ‘this might be dangerous, I’m gonna do it, have the phone on speed dial and get a rope if I fall in here.’ Right? A real leader says ‘I wouldn’t send you in if it’s dangerous, I’m going to go into it because it might be.’ And you only have to display that form of leadership a few times, and now you have people that will follow you into the hot gates of Thermopoly. These are people that will follow you into the hot gates of hell. And now with that team, Allison, I’ll build the pyramids.”