Why Simplicity May Be Solar’s Biggest Advantage Right Now ft. Aaron Nichols & Jacob Yang | Soliverse Ep. 39

What if solar’s biggest advantage right now is not more complexity, but simpler communication? In this episode of Soliverse l The Future of Solar Episode 39, host Peter Pongracz is joined by Aaron Nichols, host of This Week In Solar and Marketing and BD Manager at Exact Solar, and Jacob Yang, Founder and CEO of Amp Your Story and clean energy marketer.

Together, they explore why solar, storage, and clean energy companies often struggle to communicate clearly, why energy security is becoming a stronger message for homeowners and businesses, how distributed generation and balcony solar are shifting the market, and why clean energy marketing needs to meet people where they are.

The conversation also covers data centers, rising electricity bills, utility relationships, community solar, solar conferences, personal branding, storytelling, and why simple, human, specific messaging can help the solar industry build trust and drive action faster.

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Connect with Jacob Yang:
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Transcript

Coming up...

Aaron Nichols 0:00

We have no idea how to communicate because we're so busy trying to sound smart and prove that we're smart to our peer group that we forget that the audience has no idea what the hell we're talking about.

Jacob Yang 0:11

I think sometimes it's so easy to get lost in the noise of like we found a better, more innovative, technical way to say what we're saying. But sometimes you just have to meet people where they're at.

Peter Pongracz 0:21

That is Aaron Nichols, host of This Week in Solar, and Jacob Yang, founder and CEO of AMP Your Story. They highlight why clean energy messaging fails when it gets too technical to connect with the people it needs to reach.

Aaron Nichols 0:38

I think anyone who wins in the digital age has to communicate quickly and simply.

Peter Pongracz 1:13

I hope this is gonna be an even better one. Oh, I'm sure it will be.

How conflict and energy prices could affect solar markets

Peter Pongracz 1:17

Hey Jacob. So we've been talking about a lot of stuff uh already, but uh maybe we should kick off by the the news of the week. You know, we have a new war in the in the pipeline or happening, so it's going to impact a couple of things in solar as well. So, what do you guys think about that?

Aaron Nichols 1:33

I'm not gonna pretend I'm any kind of expert. The only hopeful thing I see is that it's probably going to raise fuel prices, uh, which will encourage more people to switch to EVs, which again is a subject I'm not an expert in. Um, but down the pipeline, I'm sure that will raise energy bills and cause more people to switch to solar.

Jacob Yang 1:53

What I've seen in this trend, I think this has kind of been leading up to this moment, is a lot of financiers and investors working with detail skilled developers and IPPs uh are trying to diversify the portfolio outside of the US. So getting into the MEA market, APAC, and it makes sense. You know, anyone who's even on the job side and they're getting layoffs, when they come to me and they ask about a new job where they can get back into clean energy. I often refer to people who have diversified portfolio in the MEA market with offshore wind in the APAC region, not just the US, because there's uh still, as you are well aware, Peter, many, many headwinds that continue to push through the administration.

Peter Pongracz 2:34

Oh, for sure. And I mean, I can only echo that from a European perspective as well. You know, we were just uh looking at the graphs of uh gas in Europe and it doubled in the last three or four days. So that's definitely uh uh kind of negative news, but hopefully it's going to put a little bit of sail in, uh put a little bit of wind in the sail of the European policymakers as well, because you know how we are. We we like to talk and and debate things and not really implement too many things too much stuff. But uh I hope that this is going to be like a a new wave of you know kind of the the Ukrainian conflict as well. It really helped a lot, you know, in terms of renewables. People woke woke up, they they understood that you know energy security is actually geopolitical security as well. So we'll see, we'll see how this whole thing is gonna unfold. But I I definitely see a much much more companies, especially from the US, uh looking into new markets, including Europe, including Middle East, including Africa as well. So we shall see.

Why opinions are easy, but implementation is hard

Aaron Nichols 3:36

Yeah, I mean, it's something you I joke about this all the time, but I feel like the having of opinions is the really fun part of politics, but the doing of things happens less and less nowadays, because that's the boring gray work that happens in the middle, and everyone just sort of likes to have the opinions, and we've kind of turned our politicians into personal brand influencers um with social media. But the doing of things, that's what we need to get better at.

Peter Pongracz 4:02

And especially, you know, like if you look at uh China as well, the they they do way more doing than anybody else in the world, right? In terms of energy output as well. Like it's it's it's just insane the the amount of scale and implementation that they they managed to pull pull off in the last what five years. It's it's just incredible.

Aaron Nichols 4:20

Yeah, I think I go back and forth on that because I hate that I live in a country that has put so much red tape between us and deploying renewables. But at the end of the day, I'm also thankful that I don't live in a country where someone can just say, like, hey, your land is now, we're gonna we're gonna do a solar farm there.

Peter Pongracz 4:38

It's the the two sides of the the same coin, right? And and and you you're absolutely right about it, you know, the the human rights part as well, and that that is or isn't isn't unfolding in China, but you know, from

Energy security and the new solar message

Peter Pongracz 4:51

a uh global perspective, definitely it's uh they they are definitely gaining way more momentum than anybody else around the world, right? In terms of energy and energy security, uh for sure.

Jacob Yang 5:02

Yeah, Pierre, one thing I I'd like to add onto that too, you're mentioning the UK and when we're looking at uh electricity prices. You know, I talked with the CEO of Wild Tribe, they're a clean energy marketing agency, and they mentioned energy security, and I think that's a really strong term that we all need to start utilizing, especially in the residential solar sector, because it really emphasizes how much pressure, especially in the UK, they're feeling for electricity prices. Like when he talked to me, it was just insane. And I I think we're starting to see some of that in in the US as well. And uh, I think the scary part is I don't even flinch anymore when I look at my utility a utility bill for electricity and it it continues to skyrocket. And yes, there are things that you can do to offset that with timing of washing your clothes and things like that. But to Aaron's point, he's told me in a separate conversation that I believe we should have solar on every rooftop. 100%.

Aaron Nichols 6:01

Yeah, and I think the the energy security angle is particularly exciting because it appeals to the people who traditionally haven't gone solar. And through for years there, you had the the green energy people, the let's save the world people, they were the pioneers who put solar on their home, you know, instead of getting a jacuzzi, because it was the people who were far enough ahead in life that they could afford it and they chose solar rather than a different heavy draw on their power. But now, when you have instability and you have more frequent extreme weather events, um, you have more conservative people who value things like independence and making sure their families are safe and making sure that they have power in emergencies. We're seeing a lot more of those people as an installer come to us and ask us, like, will you please do solar and battery on my property? Because I want to make sure that like the people I love are protected. That's another reason I love balcony solar. And I think if if anyone has listened to This Week in Solar, the show that I did, uh the our most popular episodes have been roundups about balcony solar in the US. And I'm particularly excited to talk about it with you, Peter, because I know it's huge in Europe. I was just there last fall, you see it everywhere, it's taken off. But in the US, we still have a lot of red tape, but it was just legalized in Utah and it's taken off like crazy. And for anyone who's listening and doesn't know, balcony solar is like you go to a grow you go to a shop, you buy a kit with a couple solar panels and an inverter, and then you plug it in like you would plug in a normal appliance, but it makes power and it feeds it back into your system so that it lowers your bills directly. And it doesn't generally require utility approval.

Peter Pongracz 7:51

Yeah, but that's a super cool solution. And here, here in Germany, for example, you can actually buy uh these uh balcony solar type of modules in IKEA as well. So you can just grab it, uh plug it in, and then you don't need to worry about it. I mean, of course, it's not going to be power in your your EV, for example, but it is going to help your energy bill for sure.

Aaron Nichols 8:12

I'm very excited for when that finally gets legalized all across the US because it's going to be a Pandora's box. I mean, it's such a perfect solution. There's going to be so many people who take them home and slap them up on their property. I'm excited to see how that plays out.

Peter Pongracz 8:26

One of my favorite questions, guys, in

Data centers, AI demand, and electricity bills

Peter Pongracz 8:28

uh in the US is that if you're looking at the AI data centers, which is a super hot topic, right? Are you guys actually feeling any sort of uh drawback already as consumers when it comes to your energy bills? You know, Jake Jacob, you already mentioned that you know it's it's fluctuating up and down. Like is it is it really on a on a state level or or how does it impact your as a consumer's energy bill?

Jacob Yang 8:52

I think the main issue with the data center development movement is I hear in conversations I was in a cafe yesterday and somebody was talking, and you could clearly tell they had sentiment for the data center being built in their backyard, which makes sense, right, with NIMIAism. But I don't think that everyone equates that to how it weighs into their energy bills, to like the overall weight and pressure on the grid. And so it just it's kind of not connecting the dots, is what I continue to hear, because people don't want the data center development, but they still want to go on their iPhone and use Chat GPT to tell them what they should do on their next vacation, you know, and and streamline some of those processes. So I I I think where the work still needs to be done is I was reading an article in Utility Dive. It was an opinion article, and they talked about speculative developers as opposed to other types of developers, and really just making sure that the development stage, the people who are going through the hurdles with moratoriums and site assessment and all those pieces to ensure that they're not affecting ghostwaters and have a very minimal environmental impact, that they're checking all the right boxes. To me, that's one of the bigger concerns.

Aaron Nichols 10:10

And Jacob, to piggyback off of what you said, I think Americans basically consider it a constitutional right, an unwritten constitutional right, to have strong opinions about things we don't really understand. That's like one thing that we're very known for. And I think, like you said, a lot of people, you know, they want to go on their iPhone and save a bajillion pictures and ask ChatGPT, but they don't want a data center near them. But I mean, the all of this happens at the speed of light. Like the data centers can be in space, and there's people thinking about putting them in space. I think there's a lot of good reasons why people don't want them in their backyards, especially that they're just, you know, big, ugly-looking warehouses and they don't bring a lot of jobs into communities, and so people don't feel the connection to them or don't feel very excited about them. I'm lucky that I don't live anywhere near any of them that are being developed, and I'm on city-owned power in a city of 100,000 people. So it's not something that we've seen impact our power bills directly, but I know that there's a lot of people, especially in the region Exact Solar works in, because of PJM and data centers being developed kind of all across that region. There's a lot of people who have had their bills go up 20% a year in the last two years. And data centers are just one thing to blame. There's also the fact that the grid is falling apart. The grid is a hundred years old in places and just kind of rotting, and no one knows where we're going to get the money

How rooftop solar lets people opt out of rising bills

Aaron Nichols 11:50

to fix it. And so there's a lot of issues that, you know, have kind of created this perfect storm. But the thing that we just hammer on over and over again is like, you can just opt out of this. That's the cool thing about privately owned solar. I'm no utility solar expert, but I am a behind-the-meter expert. And anyone who wants to, generally, unless they have like a really shaded property or they live in a strict utility zone, but most people can just go to a solar installer, ask them to put solar on their roof, own the output of that, and lower their bills directly. I mean, it's what an amazing time to be alive.

Peter Pongracz 12:32

True. And uh, you know, I'm I'm actually consulting a company who's who's doing quite a lot of um MA transaction activities and tracking the the data behind that. And and one of the main verticals or or geos is the US. And what keeps coming back again and again is DG, you know, distributed generation. So it's it's it's a keyword that that keeps popping up, especially since uh end of last year. Everybody is really shifting focus to this because before, you know, you you had the CNI part and then you had the utility scale, but people are really kind of shifting their focus into DG, and and it's also an interesting topic to explore as well.

Aaron Nichols 13:11

You can be so creative with it as well. Like legally, as long as you're not backfeeding the grid, meaning as long as you don't have it plugged into your system, legally you can do whatever you want to a point. Like you can go on Facebook Marketplace, you can go on Craigslist, you can buy solar panels that were pulled off of an old construction site for 50 to 100 bucks each, and then you can buy a battery bank, you can just lay those out, charge a battery bank, have it on your kitchen counter, and charge all of your devices off of it to save money if you want to. That's the thing that I love most about solar, is that it gives power to the people and it enables creativity. I mean, the, you know, many of you have seen, if anyone listening has seen my LinkedIn, like my wife and I have an off-grid setup. I have a Toyota Tacoma that I can drive into the backcountry. I just have a cheap old solar panel that I got off Facebook Marketplace. I have a nameless Chinese battery bank that I also got off Facebook Marketplace, and I have a Starlink. And because I work remotely, I can now go work remotely from the woods, um, which is a huge dream of mine. Like I can shut my laptop at the end of the day and I'm already in the best campsites, and I don't have to go fight Denver people for them. That's what I love about Solar Man, is just like it it enables creativity and it enables freedom over lifestyle in so many interesting and beautiful ways.

Peter Pongracz 14:35

And the important question to ask is did you install the panels yourself?

Aaron Nichols 14:39

I didn't have to install Jack, dude. It was like I uh I had to buy a MC4 to DC input connector for my solar panel off Amazon. And then I just attach that to the MC4 connectors, and now I just lay it out in the sun, it plugs directly into the battery bank, and I have enough power to run my Starlink and charge our phones and charge our laptops and power any lighting that we have out there. I mean, it's an amazing, it's an amazing time to be alive.

Peter Pongracz 15:09

That's amazing, you know. And you you are actually the the person who's a little bit uh probably the furthest uh from civilization and being able to survive without civilization out of the three of us for sure.

Aaron Nichols 15:21

Yeah, I'm not great at growing food. I have a I have a cursory knowledge. Um, I know how to hunt, but haven't successfully hunted something yet. But I do have a bow. And I'm very good at chopping wood. So, you know, I think I'll I'll be kind of okay.

Jacob Yang 15:37

One thing that really drives the equity, I think I should say, for people to have solar within this next phase is the balcony solar, you know, it realizing that it's not gonna involve an EPC or installer to actually set it up, it's that in-between stage. And not sure the pros and cons between the two, you know, as you look at like the size of the systems and how much power

Balcony solar, community solar, and power equity

Jacob Yang 16:03

you get. But I even think about my little phone charger that's a solar panel that I put in my window. And for me, that's like just the first step. So anything that really opens the door for people to have more equity for their power, I think that's really critical. Equity for your power, because you look at convenient solar programs to provide power to an uh apartment complex that you're paying subsidized housing for, right? And you get to offset that power. And that's really appealing to the renters who might have very limited income. They could be artists, could be other facets where they don't have a stable income. So I really like the idea of balcony solar. And then when we look on the you know the utility scale side, I mean, there's things happening with utilities such as Excel Energy that Jagar Shah talked about, and you know, how Becker, we have a new best system coming that's been announced. And what I'm also hopeful for is yes, the utilities have been in place and define the cost of energy prices, but at the same time, I have a lot of friends who work at utilities, who worked at a clean energy company before, or they worked at a clean energy company afterward and they came from a utility background. So for me, some of those conversations to understand what are some of the barriers for homeowners to get power and like how do we work with them on a utility level is really critical. And I don't think it's like clean energy versus utility, I think it needs to be a both.

Peter Pongracz 17:30

Uh, for sure. And I mean, you know, I I think most of these systems or the the rollout of those systems comes back to you know, the carrot and the stick, right? So basically you can either incentivize people to get solar or basically you can penalize them for not having solar, right? And here in in Europe, it's more the the kind of it the carrot is already gone for a couple of years, especially in the residential sector. But uh, but now you know it's going to be more the stick that if your house is not energy certificate, you know, C or above, I don't know what the equivalent of that in the US would be, but but basically you will you will not be able to either uh qualify for cheaper financing on your property or you will be more or less mandated or nudged heavily to you know change your windows, you know, convert the property into an energy certificate that's a little bit better than the the one you currently have.

Aaron Nichols 18:27

Generally, and this is personal and this is you know very much the American in me talking, but I'm generally against that kind of stuff because like those kind of rules always end up penalizing the poorest people and like really hurting people who are hurting financially. Um but I think you you did hit on a key word there, which is

Incentives, utilities, and why change moves slowly

Aaron Nichols 18:52

incentive. I think like once the incentives are in place correctly, that's when people act. And the incentive right now is very much in favor of going solar. And utilities are accidentally incentivizing people to go solar. I've been here for about three years now in the solar industry. And at the beginning, I was very frustrated. I did what everyone does, and I brought like, you know, that intense energy, and I was like, why isn't this completely different? This all needs to change right now. And then everyone, everyone, thankfully, who's been in this game for a long time, was just like, dude, this is kind of this is what it is. Like, this is this is the slowest bureaucratic machine ever because it's tied to the government and it's very tied, like they have no incentive to do things differently. And so the private sector has to force utilities to act differently. They're not gonna do it on their own. I read Gretchen Bakke's book, The Grid, which is a history of the American grid and how everything happened. And she had this really hilarious section where she was talking about how like utilities for probably 40, 50 years just had like guaranteed locked-in growth. And they knew that they were gonna grow by one to three percent a year. They just had to take a couple of very specific actions, and nothing was going to change. They were gonna have just steady growth that they could give back to their shareholders, which meant that they never recruited creative talent and they never recruited top talent, right? They just went to universities and they were like, who wants to just do what they're told for 40 years and retire? And you had a very specific kind of person who was just like, yes, just tell me I will stamp the thing over and over and over again. And then we got to this point where we have things like solar and wind and intermittent power and things that require creative solutions. And all of a sudden, we're just like, you have to innovate right now. And they're like, they they told me that if I'd stood here and did what I was told for 40 years that I would get to retire, like, what are you talking about? We have to be kind and understanding because it is what it is, and it is up to the private sector to change it because the utilities aren't going to change it until they're absolutely forced to at the last minute.

Jacob Yang 21:19

Yeah, and uh I think uh to piggyback up, Aaron, and articulate in a different way what I was saying is that when I get approached by somebody who's very anti-utility, um, I understand that sentiment. And at the same time, those are the people we have to work with, right? We have to work with the utilities, we have to navigate these complexities, and it's just part of the game. And I don't think it's right or wrong. It's just I think the sooner that people accept that and trying to stop moving an immovable object uh is when you actually get change in in our administration, in our local, state level.

Aaron Nichols 21:55

And it's important to acknowledge that we want people who know what they're doing to handle. Electricity. We need people who have some idea how to safely transport electricity to be the ones in control of it because it can kill you.

Peter Pongracz 22:09

And on the other hand, you know, if we are talking about the whole system, right, it's it's always gotta be a tug-of-war between push and pull type of forces and to move the industry forward. But uh

Why money can move solar beyond politics

Peter Pongracz 22:21

I think at the end of the day, money talks, right? And I think money is the most powerful forcing function. So I I just read an article the other day about you know uh red versus blue states, and and last year blue uh red states actually installed way more solar than blue states, right? So if we can remove the politics and the the political bias out of it, I think people understand that it just makes financial sense. That's the most important part.

Jacob Yang 22:50

Yeah, and as the common ground, I when I think about the uh the ongoing um subtle battle between solar best wind on one side and nuclear energy too. I mean, uh when I've talked to people who are in nuclear energy, their vision or perspective is clean energy. And when you look at the people in our world, our vision is clean energy. And so I think sometimes uh there's this like internal battle between even these two sides, but bigger picture, we're all trying to get away from fossil fuels. That's the bigger picture. And when we look at the difference between utility and the private sector, I think it's a similar thing. Like, okay, how do we empower consumers to have control over their power, electricity, and their bills, and at the same time make the utility happy, and at the same time also make the solar installer developer happy. So it's a delicate game, but ultimately I'd rather be playing this game than one that continues to lean into fossil fuels.

Aaron Nichols 23:56

This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, and like I like I said earlier, coming to that acceptance of this is what it is and this is how it works, and it's not going to change immediately. I think I have realized, especially reading historical books, I love history, and everyone talks about oh, it's the most polarized time ever to be alive. No, it's not. We can just see it. We have cameras everywhere, we have phones, we can see the polarization. But like, there's always been strong disagreement. There's always been political violence, and there's always been this like everyone has strong opinions, everyone's emotionally connected to them, and everyone runs in separate directions as hard as they can, and it slowly moves everything forward, just like an inch at a time. And you have to take your wins where you can get them. And that is, you know, what's helped me realize that I'm gonna burn out if I'm just expecting this to change overnight. And to be sustainable, I have to understand that that's what it is.

Peter Pongracz 25:03

People are reluctant to change by nature, right? So it's not something that, oh, I I I love to turn my life upside down every single day because I want to start new tomorrow and everything is going to be better. Everything, everybody is reluctant to change, and I think that's that's the most most key, one of the most key aspects of it as well, that we need to focus quite a bit more on education as well, both on the residential CNI, utility scale side, even, because people need to gain a better understanding. For example, I I talked to um uh Phil Harvich from uh AMH Holding, I think Aaron, you also had him on the show. They actually have a pretty cool mission that they are educating the stakeholders on a local level of their projects and trying to help them understand what actually so what solar means and what it actually does and what it can do for them.

Aaron Nichols 25:57

Yeah, and he's amazing because he's such a calm, stable presence. And that's something that I think we miss often when we have a lot of passionate people who believe that this needs to happen overnight or we're all gonna die, which may or may not be true. But Phil's great because he's just like so centered and he talks to you as in such a calm, reasonable way, and he doesn't freak out, he doesn't react. I mean, he's he really understands how to play that game. He's not gonna like yell at someone and call them a fascist because they don't like clean energy. But Peter, I I joke about that all the time, what you said earlier. I mean, we like we're monkeys. Like we're evolutionarily, we're monkeys. We invented logic a couple hundred years ago, but we've been emotional for a million years. And our brains are designed to help us survive a chaotic environment. And so we don't like new things. We don't actually like innovation. We all say we like innovation, but when we encounter a new thing, our brain is like, is it gonna eat me? Am I gonna am I gonna die? Is it gonna kill me? Um, am I gonna be ostracized for liking this thing? Are the people I love not going to accept me because I like this new thing? It just takes time for people to get used to things they don't understand, even though we claim we love change and innovation, we don't actually.

Peter Pongracz 27:29

I couldn't agree more, but uh uh it it it just reminded me of uh of a quote uh that I read somewhere that you know we have the monkey mind, we have archaic institutions, but we have god-like technology, and that's uh that's a killer combination that's really difficult to navigate.

Jacob Yang 27:46

Where I see the uh the marketing and communication side that comes into the play is when you're a utility scale developer and you have to work with local communities and address sentiment. I mean, that's communication. Your favorite word, Aaron, here storytelling. Well, we'll find another word for it. But I'm fine with communication. It's innovation. Innovation is the one that drives me. Innovation. Yeah. But uh when we're storytelling and we're appealing to the emotional side, I mean, that's why I believe barking and communications people in clean energy are at the front end of this quote unquote battle, is because ultimately we just want to help teach people that this thing is okay, it's safe, it will help improve your quality of life, and you will all be happier for it.

Aaron Nichols 28:35

Yeah. And we can only say so much. You can communicate and you can throw ads at someone until you're blue in the face, but it's like that works for some people, and you want to get the people who are okay with trying new things, but there's nothing more powerful than a referral engine. And that's where we get so much of our business at Exact Solar, is from people who had a good experience going solar with us. And those are the best customers. And like there's, you know, we live in an age of constant misinformation and distraction. No one's actually paying attention to what's going on on their phones. So when their neighbor comes and says this is a good thing, they're like, oh my God, thank God.

Peter Pongracz 29:16

Uh sorry, I was just taking some notes that I wanted to come back to on the communication side of things. So, Jacob, you mentioned communication. It's I think it's an absolute keyword that we really often forget about because what we typically do is we instead of communicating, we are just sending stuff out from our brain and we expect the other person to receive and understand that message. And I think that is the the most difficult thing to do well. That you should actually be thinking about sending the input and the information that the other person is able to receive and understand and process. And I think we are sometimes stuck in this loop of thinking with only our own mind, but it's it's quite important to think with the other persons as well.

Jacob Yang 30:02

I'll hand it over to Aaron here, but he recommended smart brevity, and that was a real game changer on the way I communicate in clean energy, and I know for other people as well.

Aaron Nichols 30:10

There's three books, and I Jacob was gracious enough to invite me to speak on a panel in San Antonio, and I I recommended these three books in my talk. It's Smart Brevity, um, made to stick, and making numbers count. And the theme of all three of those put together is basically that we have no idea how to communicate because we're so busy trying to sound smart and prove that we're smart to our peer group that we forget that the audience has no idea what the hell we're talking about. Um, and you know, this happens in large corporations, especially because like people who rise to a high enough level that they control the messaging of a large corporation tend to have spent a lot of time in academia and have advanced degrees. Now, academia is an echo chamber where you are consistently rewarded for making information more complicated, not for simplifying it. Then when all those people go to a large corporation, they often create a creative process where you have like seven people on the along the line and legal, and then they have to change the messaging. And by the time it comes out of the meat grinder, it says something like, We advance materials and advance technology through like systematic innovation. And everyone's like, what that doesn't mean anything. Um,

Why simple communication wins in the digital age

Aaron Nichols 31:40

and we don't think enough about creating a culture of simplification and creating a culture of um of lowering things to a reading level and an understanding level that the average person can get because we're too busy trying to sound smart and trying to and creating things for a level of person that is idealistic and that we do want to attract, but that doesn't invite everyone. And then you end up with a whole other side of people who just kind of see the way that we talk as fancy and out of touch, and they don't understand it and they feel hostile towards it.

Peter Pongracz 32:24

Do you think that's about to change in our generation?

Aaron Nichols 32:27

Maybe. I think anyone who wins in the digital age has to communicate quickly and simply. Um even the even the smartest people I know are completely distracted. All of us have our attention pulled in a million different directions all the time. Like if you if you're sending out something on a phone, that person has 50 notifications and 10 different websites and a million different things they could be doing. Regardless of how educated you are, this is something that's been repeatedly proven. Like if you're on a phone, or even if you're doing something and your phone is in the same room, you have a measurably lower IQ than if your phone is in a different room. You just have less brain processing power. And so things have to be simple for people to understand them. And as much as we wish that we could like put all the complex info in and draw all our pretty graphs and have someone sit down for an hour and puzzle out exactly what we're trying to say, that's not how the world works now.

Jacob Yang 33:31

It also comes back to uh, in my opinion, Peter, product marketing. One of the reasons I think product marketing as a function is so critical is because if you're talking to uh an investment firm and they have investment teams and they have asset management teams, the difference in communication between investigated reporting and boardroom clarity, the difference between contractual availability and operator oversight. So when you have your audiences, I think sometimes it's so easy to get lost in the noise of like, we found a better, more innovative way, technical way to say what we're saying. But sometimes you just have to meet people where they're at. An investment manager who's got a portfolio of assets, you know, a lot of assets doesn't actually isn't boots on the ground managing the assets or anything. Um they just want to know very quickly can what you provide them give them clarity to pitch to their bosses? So sometimes it's just going back to the basics and marketing and communications.

Peter Pongracz 34:36

It's so interesting to hear your experience as well, you know, because you guys uh are more on the marketing side. I'm a sales guy by trade. And and you know, for for me, the the biggest challenge professionally has always been to ask myself and keep asking myself, even when writing a simple email, does the person need to know this piece of information? You know, and have I said everything that he does need to know? And I think you know, then it then it comes back to the previous step of the the marketing communication as well, that most companies are doing the the wrong way, that you you actually just blast out too much information, but you never really ask, does your target audience need to hear that information?

Aaron Nichols 35:21

There's also the the next step, which is have I given this person what they need to know to pass that information to another person and have that be heard and understood. And there's there's a simple example that they use in one of the three books I mentioned. Um when we're talking about like concrete language, and I'll I'll give you guys the exercise really quick, but close your eyes really fast for me. So when I say a purple cow, what do you see in your mind?

Peter Pongracz 35:56

Uh chocolate.

Aaron Nichols 35:58

When I say the word innovation, what do you see in your mind? Some type of a light bulb. Yeah, I saw a lightning bolt. See that there's there's a difference between concrete and esoteric language. There, like when you use a word like innovation and someone has to pass that up the chain, it means something different to every person because there's no real visual example. When I say purple cow, someone can pass that information along quite easily. So focusing on simple, concrete things that we can actually picture in our minds is is huge and very important when someone's like explaining it to their wife and thinking about if they're gonna buy it or explaining it to their, you know, CFO and trying to justify moving the company in that direction.

Jacob Yang 36:49

Peter, I also think there's a lot on the marketing and communication side, but also sales side of world-class individuals outside of clean energy, their industry agnostic, that I think sometimes is missed in our specific sector. My theory for that is because we have to actually have to do our job for one. We also have to understand policy, right? So you're already being asked to do two full-time jobs as one person for one salary. And then you're also dealing with insane political headwinds that cause friction in your role. And on top of it, often for marketing teams, it's a one-person shop. So when you put all of that together, the capacity you have to go and find something new to try a new angle to reach your audience is very limited. But at the same time, when you leverage those tools, that's when I see people have the most success. We look at Jay Swedleton. He's arguably the best email marketer in the world. He's got a free tool called subjectline.com. He knows how to penetrate an email. He knows how to get in your inbox and drive interest. He's got a tool that does it. He's been doing it for millions of people. He puts out all these reports. He's funny, he's witty, he does all those things. And some of them are completely unrelated to what you think it would be. One example is a subject line that says you probably won't open this. And just getting very back to the basics. Doing something that's so different than everybody that it causes you to drive interest.

Aaron Nichols 38:20

That's especially important in the age of AI where everyone is rushing to use the tools that are just averaging messaging across all of the messaging that's already out there. It gets AI writing gets better and better, but it's trained on all of the writing, and 80% of the writing is bad. And so, like when you're just using AI to write emails, you're creating forgettable emails. When you're using AI to write LinkedIn posts, you're creating, you know, like I don't know what you call like simple carbohydrates where someone's gonna eat it, it might taste good, but there's no substance, there's no fuel or power. And that's why it's so important to be yourself and make people laugh and stand out and be interesting, because we're headed into a world where like there's just tons and tons and tons of average messaging.

Jacob Yang 39:12

Another great example on the sales side, Peter, is uh there's a book called the NEPQ Neuro Emotional Persuasive Questioning Book. It's called the Black Book, it's for sales. This guy has done arguably every industry out there, including residential solar sales. And he takes the Aaron and I were joking about this this last week weekend. He takes the very common, like, hey, do you have time for a quick chat on a call on a call? You know, that email, right, is so saturated that it it instantly causes you to just negate it and be like, okay, this is just junk. But he takes for reframing of that and says things that are so core to what people are feeling and psychology that it gets them to open up their email. An example is if you are having a hard time as a sales exact in clean energy, one of the things he says is you go back to them and say, at the end, did you end up giving up on that or what actually happened? And nobody actually admits to giving up on anything, right? Nobody says, Yep, I gave up on that. I didn't work, it was my fault. Nobody says that. But as soon as I sent that to prospect last summer, within an hour, I got an email, and that person said, Hey, I was just thinking about you. I was gonna follow up. I'm so glad you reached my inbox. And hard to say if they actually were, or really, that message just really resonated with getting that uh prospect back into the pipeline.

Why solar sales still comes down to people

Peter Pongracz 40:37

True, but you know, from my experience, the what we often forget is we are talking to people. So we should just talk and relate to people and and and sometimes not to get stuck in our work persona, right? That uh that you you are trying to portray to the outside world. It's it's it's much more important to try to connect with people on a personal level and and not just you know, I'm pushing my product. Because essentially, if you're selling something, your job is actually just separating the people who need your product from the ones who don't. And it's that simple. And if you if you try to push your product on people who don't need it, they are not going to be long-time customers for sure.

Aaron Nichols 41:19

Yeah, that's one of my one of my favorite sales facts is like you can increase the likelihood of a close by cursing if the prospect curses first. So, like, if they drop a curse word and then you do it too, you build camaraderie, simple things like that. Um, but you can't be the first one to curse, you can't lead it. That will decrease the likelihood that you close. But if they start using the curse words and then you start using the curse words as well, then you have something in common.

Jacob Yang 41:52

I've done some sales work for uh a conference called Charge. They're an energy branding conference. And the people that I got the clothes from at the end, they were all friends. They were part of a community, they were people I reached out to and built that connection before we actually got to the conversation of science to somebody. So I completely

Personal branding and trust in clean energy

Jacob Yang 42:14

agree. Like the the spray and pray method of cold email. Some people claim it still works. Uh, you know, I'm I'm not completely sold on it. And if you're building these relationships, they start at the very front end, human to human. And I think that's another reason, too, right now, why we all need to have personal brands. Everyone who is at uh B2B, SaaS, clean tech startup needs to have a personal brand. Everyone at a residential solar installer, they need to have a personal brand so people can trust them and build that connection. So when they're ready to actually be sold to, it can happen.

Aaron Nichols 42:47

It helps so much. Like there's so many shows I've gone to or networking events I've gone to that someone's invited me to on LinkedIn where like I show up and people know stuff about me. And so I don't have to do all of the work because they've seen some of my content and they know who I am and they know what I'm about. It also helps separate the kind of people you want to work with from the kind of people that you don't. Um, there was a great example too of I we were at the charge conference last week, and this woman who's a mutual acquaintance of Jacob and I is like, she made this kind of graphic joke that many people would consider gross. And a couple people in that group just loved it and laughed, and we were just like, oh my God, a person. Like we can we can hang out with you, we can relax. Like it it's so important to just be yourself and let that naturally separate the kind of people you want to hang out with versus the kind of people you don't.

What makes solar events actually useful

Peter Pongracz 43:47

True. And and that's also kind of self selection as well, right? So, you know, if you if yeah, as you mentioned, it it kind of uh separates the people you want to hang out with from the ones who you don't uh and actually On that note, why don't we dig a little bit deeper into the the conferences and event side of things? Like, what have you guys seen in the last couple of months? You just came back for from an event as well. Uh how is it looking? Um, how is it looking in terms of what? In terms of events, you know, I know that for example, RE Plus, uh, they they've been they've been quite successful for a long time, and now you know there is some competition as well. But uh uh do you guys prefer the the larger events uh or maybe the smaller ones where it's a more kind of uh pre-selected group of people that you can actually go deeper with?

Jacob Yang 44:38

I think you just need to have a realistic strategy for your sales and marketing team. So when you look at RE Plus, it's a jungle, right? There is so much going on that even when you have 20 book meetings like I did or so, roughly 20, when I went last fall, it was still literally running around all the time. So if you go to RE Plus, everyone's gonna be there. You can meet with the people, but you have to do the legwork before you actually get in the room with them. But then if you look at a conference like AMNA, Asset Management, North America, and San Diego, that's like 500 people instead of 40,000. And the facility itself is so small that as a marketer, you can then do things like geofencing. So when everyone is on their phones in between or they're pretending like they're listening to you, right? And they're they're half looking at their phones or whatever, you can still get your content in front of them. So from a marketing communication sales lens, you just have to have a realistic plan about the conferences you want to go to, understand who you're meeting. It's always great to book meetings ahead of time so you have a realistic plan of action because RE Plus, there's so many toys, there's gadgets, I mean, there's like literal robots, there's huge events, you know, um booths, all this extravagant thing that distracts and disorients you, then unless you're crystal clear about what you're there to do, you're just not gonna be as successful.

Peter Pongracz 45:59

So you gotta do your homework early.

Jacob Yang 46:01

You gotta do your homework early. And uh RE Plus, I mean, I the numbers I received from colleagues was around 40,000 gun. They're now moving to the um convention center, civic center. I don't quite remember what what it's called there. And uh it's gonna be in November. So um I think that'll even help distinguish a little bit more because the last few times it was Vegas, it was also disorienting. If you're in the Venetian Plazio, you had to walk through a sea of um people who are actually just in Vegas to be in Vegas, who are gambling, you know, there was a lot of smoking going on, there was slot machines, a lot of noise, a lot of bright lights, a lot of things that are very disorienting that I'm hoping once we get into a venue that's a little bit more exclusive to community, we can get a little more clarity together.

Community marketing and the rule of one story

Peter Pongracz 46:43

For sure. And and Jacob, on on that note, I actually have a question for you. So Aaron mentioned, you know, that you you pretty much need to be a media company first, and then you can run your own business uh second, right? Because you need to communicate those messages. What are some of the kind of best practices, lessons learned that you you have seen in the industry and you guys are applying in in your day-to-day?

Jacob Yang 47:05

From my lens, I think one thing that is so prevalent with AI is community marketing. That's similar to what Aaron talked about, like just actually talking with people. You know, it's the reason one of the reasons I put together Ampere Story, which is a clean energy online community, and those relationships indirectly are helping people with new business, build strategic relationships, uh, grow their own businesses. It's good for everybody when you are able to just even in a virtual setting, make it somewhere that's more inclusive and community-oriented.

Aaron Nichols 47:39

And Peter, I can uh I can say one thing that's been huge for us is something that you could call the rule of one story. Like a lot of people talk about case studies and all that kind of stuff, but there's a very specific way to do them, and there's a very specific reason that they work, especially for middle of funnel or once sales is already talking to a prospect. So we have the instinct to go for big numbers. This is something that I learned from making numbers count. But the human mind basically just glazes over big numbers immediately. Like if we hear a big number without context, we don't have anything to ground it in and we don't have an understanding of what it is. If you say we've worked with 10,000 customers, people are like, yeah,

Why one customer story beats a big number

Aaron Nichols 48:26

whatever. Um, like it, you know, you anything that's like 10,000 to a million, anything in that range, like we don't know what that means. But if you are able to ground that in a single story and then zoom out, it will have measurably larger impact. And what I mean by that is like let's say you've helped 10,000 customers. Who is the best customer, or who are five of your best customers? Can you go talk to them and do like an actual interview that someone can consume if they want? Like we've interviewed homeowners and we've interviewed commercial owners on our show. And if you let them tell that story, and then you say, you know, they talk about what a great time they had and how great your company was at handling their project and how great you they were, how great you were at updating them on where the project was, and how you like held their hand through the whole thing and helped them when they were freaking out and you know, helped them get through it. If you tell that story and then say, and we've helped 999 for 9,999 other people, then people start to have a frame of what that means rather than, you know, we've just helped 10,000 people or like, yeah, okay, and big number, who cares?

Peter Pongracz 49:44

That's actually a powerful message as well. That, you know, you can be one of the next 9,999.

Aaron Nichols 49:50

And I want to drive that home. It like a lot of people think that I'm off my rocker on that. Like, this is why the most successful nonprofits focus on one person or one animal at a time. When you go to your local humane society's website and you want to adopt a dog, you see one picture of one dog at a time. When you work with someone like Compassion International, they um they show you one picture of one starving child that you can sponsor. Um, and that's one of the reasons they're so successful. And this has been proven over and over and over again that people are far more likely to take action to solve a small problem than they are to solve a big problem. And if you say, you know, there's a million starving children, people are way less likely to do anything because that feels like way too big of a thing to fix. But if you say, like, I mean, Compassion International is my favorite example. We had them when we were a kid, when you're like, $10 a month is gonna make a huge difference. And at Christmas time, you can spend $20 and you can get this family a goat. And that's gonna like, that's gonna have an incredible impact in their lives. That's the kind of thing that makes people take action, is relating problems to small and measurable steps that someone can take tomorrow.

Peter Pongracz 51:10

You're right. If if you frame it like that, you know, I think we we tend to think and and and focus on the larger numbers most, but if if you can drill it down, it's definitely much more digestible for people.

Aaron Nichols 51:23

Yeah. And that's the instinct is correct. The instinct makes sense. I mean, like, for those of us who understand like and have a frame of reference for what those big numbers mean, like it makes sense that we're like, yeah, 100,000 people are gonna lose their jobs if this legislation passes. But we forget that the public doesn't have the same frame of reference and doesn't have the same understanding. And that rather than saying 100,000 jobs are gonna be lost, we should say, like, Jim just got himself off of substances last year, and he's built a skill set that has carried him out of poverty, and now he has work and dignity, and his family and kids love him again, and he's off of heroin. And if this legislation passes, Jim's gonna lose his job. And that might happen a hundred thousand times. That's what we miss when we just throw numbers at people.

Peter Pongracz 52:17

Wow, I have no comeback on that. That's uh that that's well

Workforce, recruiting, and emotional connection

Peter Pongracz 52:22

put.

Jacob Yang 52:22

I think we're we're intertwines, Peter, with you know, we look at like C and I, comedian and utility scale is on the recruiting side. I I worked with uh Blatner Energy, and they were very heavy on this is um maybe about 10 years ago or so, and uh they're very heavy on the recruitment side. And everything that Aaron is saying is spot on on like how you should position yourself when people are thinking whether or not to get into solar as a solar installer as opposed to a carpenter or another job. Because we know we have a major workforce problem, right? We don't have enough people to actually do all the work that needs to be done. And the things that Aaron is saying is exactly spot on. Like, how do we start building those stories and those emotional connections and a one-to-one case?

Aaron Nichols 53:09

It's a mindset shift that a lot of people in business have a hard time with because everyone's always thinking, what should we add? What can we do that's new and different? And there's a lot of success you can have by taking things away and simplifying things as well. But you know, it's very hard to build a KPI around that. And so a lot of people don't think that's what they

Solar versus squirrel and why simple ads work

Aaron Nichols 53:33

need.

Jacob Yang 53:33

I I think a great example too is like uh one of the best ad headlines in my career was working with a company and an agency, and we landed on a line to serve um not just homeowners, but also the installers and EPCs who have to deal with the OM maintenance after the installation has happened. And instead of saying like we do that in a technical way, we took something that was clever, relatable, and hilarious in my mind. And we said solar versus squirrel, because right, a squirrel will run onto a panel, they're gonna reach. I mean, this is a real thing, and they can, you know, bite into wires and cause all sorts of real havoc that causes OM to need to happen. And we just said at the the payoff at the end, we monitor the battle so you don't have to. And that was by far the best ad headline I've seen in my career because it was witty, it was fun, it was emotional, people could connect to it, and it still got to the exact pain that they're all experiencing.

Aaron Nichols 54:32

And this is why it's so fun when something like that wins, because like there's all these people who think that we need to be so complex and we need to write more complicated white papers, and we need to like give people a sense of awe that we have people at our company who are so smart that they'll never understand them, but you should work with us because God, they're so smart. Like, it's always the simple messaging that wins.

Why different and weird can be more memorable

Peter Pongracz 54:58

And also not just simple, but the the different messaging, right? Or or the weird as you say it, Aaron. Like I was listening to one of your uh recordings, and and and you're right, weird is good, you know, weird is different, and weird is memorable.

Aaron Nichols 55:12

There's three brands I can think of off the top of my head that people follow and love religiously. There's there's so many, but all of them leaned into being different in their sector, and that's Duolingo, Liquid Death, and Black Rifle Coffee. All of those have built like zany fun ad campaigns where they're totally different, and they've been rewarded for it many times over. Like Liquid Death just came out with um an urn that plays music. They collaborated with Spotify. Like you can go buy an urn that has like a your death playlist on it, and whenever anyone opens the lid, it plays music. That kind of stuff is incredible.

Jacob Yang 55:52

Another great one is Wendy's. Their uh social media game is insane.

Aaron Nichols 55:56

So big props to them. And I'm interested, like, no one has done that in energy. I'd be interested to see what would happen if someone had done that in energy. I mean, like, the company I work for is not comfortable with it, but if anyone were to do that, just to be different in a sea of like, ah, we wrote another white paper, it'd be, I feel like it would crush.

Jacob Yang 56:20

One of our uh panelists uh at Charge, her name's Michu, and she talked about design on LinkedIn, and she showed a picture of this heavy metal poster with all these like you know, heavy metal, death metal type of branding. And at the bottom in the middle, it was like this colorful icon with balloons, and it was like all these different colors, and it was like so clear, they just did something completely different and they stood out.

Aaron Nichols 56:47

Yeah, it was like a a festival poster, and every every band, their font was made of lightning and looked violent, and it was like white on a black background, and so every single band had some name that you forget about, and then right in the middle, there's one band called Party Cannon that had their font made of balloons and it looked like the Toys R Us font. And anyone, any, any, like the only thing anyone remembers after looking at that poster is Party Canon.

Peter Pongracz 57:16

Yeah, that's cool. And how how do we translate that in into a solar

Translating bold branding into solar

Peter Pongracz 57:19

context?

Aaron Nichols 57:20

It's a good question. There's a couple brands that I think locally have nailed it. There's like um Patriot Solar, I can't remember where they are, but they market heavily to conservatives and focus all their marketing on like freedom and personal power, making sure that your family's safe. That's one that comes to mind immediately. But a lot of solar companies are local, so that's really the only one I can think of off the top of my head that has demonstrated that they're different.

Jacob Yang 57:53

To emphasize what our panelist said, Michu, she also talked about it, it also came down to um the branding and the initial design. You know, a lot of our brands use blue, we use orange, we use yellow. And if you want to be relatable and fall into that sea of all these other companies, that's one way to do it. But she showed examples of companies that you couldn't tell were energy companies. They they looked innovative, like world class. Like, like you wouldn't be able to tell if you didn't have context on the verbiage if it was from Nessel or Coca-Cola or these other world-class marketers. And going full circle back to what I was saying, I think sometimes we have so many hats to wear that like we need to reach out to outside sources, these other companies, not be afraid to see something that Coca-Cola says and bring it back to our team and be like, hey, no one else is doing this. Like, let's let's give this a shot. We'll be different, we'll be innovative, we'll be all these things, you know?

Aaron Nichols 58:55

And we're very lucky at Exact that we get to be different just by virtue of the best things that are already true about us. We get to say we've been in business for 20 years. You know, we like aren't gonna we haven't gone out of business like a national shop like Titan or Sonova or Sunpower or Pazigen or any of the other million ones I could name. Like we've been here, we're gonna be here. Um you probably shouldn't go with the other guys.

Peter Pongracz 59:23

So on that note, guys, we're actually coming to the end of our time. So uh why don't you give us a a shout out to the audience of who would you like to speak to and how could you be found online?

Jacob Yang 59:32

I am Jacob Yang. You can find me under Jacob Yang on LinkedIn. I'm your trusted clean energy marketer. I do fractional marketing for clean energy companies globally, and I also own an online community called Ampere Story. We have 130 members all over the world. That's a free online community. So if you're a marketer or you're an executive in clean energy, I'm sure we can find a way to collaborate.

Aaron Nichols 59:53

I'm Aaron Nichols. I you also can find me on LinkedIn. Um, I host a podcast called This Week in Solar, which you can find on all major podcast platforms. And if you're in Colorado, I host green drinks and other events for um just clean energy folks all the time. So you can find those by going to CoGreen, um, C-O-Green. If you want to find me when I'm not working in person, good luck. That's the right answer. I'm probably in the woods with my wife, and I don't want to be found, but online.

Peter Pongracz 1:00:36

I'm very easy to find. Well done, well done. I I really envy that, but uh, we'll make sure to link to all of those in the show notes below. And yeah, thank you guys. I I appreciate your time and uh I I can't wait to do this again. Yeah, all right.

Jacob Yang 1:00:49

Thanks, Peter. Appreciate it. Good to see you. I'll talk to you guys.