Four Pillars of Sustainability for Manufacturers w/ Dakota Malone

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Welcome to the Manufacturing Executive Podcast where we explore the strategies and experiences that are driving mid sized manufacturers forward. Here you'll discover new insights from passionate manufacturing leaders who have compelling stories to share about their successes and struggles. And you'll learn from B2B sales and marketing experts about how to apply actionable business development strategies inside your business. Let's get into the show.

Welcome to another episode of the Manufacturing Executive Podcast. I'm Joe Sullivan, your host and a co founder of the industrial marketing agency gorilla76 where we help B2B manufacturers grow through revenue focused marketing programs. When I think about sustainability, my mind goes straight to the environment. When my guest today thinks about sustainability. The environment is one of four pillars of sustainability that all work together. In this conversation, he'll break them down for you and explain why today's manufacturing leaders should care. Let me introduce him. Dakota Malone is a sustainability entrepreneur in the commercial solar space. His company, Community Solar Authority helps large users of electricity think through enhanced sustainability. Dakota is someone who is thriving post five heart surgeries and truly looks at his life through the lens of sustainability, which we'll definitely talk about today. Dakota, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Joe.

Well man, five heart surgeries, that's something else. I can't just read that bio and then not say something about it. We kind of talked about this a little bit in our pre call, but that's one thing you and I share in common. Not five heart surgeries, but at least one of them. Which is something I dealt with when I was eight years old and geez, five for you. I can't imagine what you have been through and, and what it was probably like for your parents when you were young. So man, yeah, feel free to talk about that a little bit if you'd like, but would be just kind of curious to hear a little bit about your. Your background and your story and how you wound up where you are today.

Yeah, I love it. And before I jump in, I just want to say Congrats on hitting 200 plus episodes. I recently caught that on LinkedIn that you had posted that and to just have the stat and the fun fact that 90% of podcasts don't make it past 22. What you're doing is actually incredibly sustainable and I just think it's a testament to your work. So I just wanted to give you a quick shout out on that. But yeah, my, my backstory is interesting, Joe. You know, obviously being where I'm at now, kind of managing a company, especially in the Sustainability space. It really started with sustainability principles in my own life, as you had kind of read through and two quick stories is actually heart surgeries and Boy Scouts. So the first is I've gone through and experienced five heart surgeries. I had two as soon as I was born. I had two in high school and then one a week after I graduated high school. I ended up having open heart surgery. And so from a young age, the dial on my life was changed and really flipped upside down. My heart was broken open with compassion in certain moments, like after I had heart surgery, open heart. I was probably 17 years old at the time in the pediatric ICU. Some little kid, kitty corner to me, was walking down the hall with his little bucket of blood, which is what you have to do in order to leave the hospital after heart surgery because there's excess blood in your chest. And, you know, just watching him go through that experience as someone who was younger than me, allowed empathy to flood into my life. And so, you know, through those different experiences, each were traumatic for their own reasons. It really had me focus on what was going on on the inside. And for me, I think that's one of the big reflections of human sustainability is not just about how we look at the outside world and what's going on, but really what's going on inside of ourselves and how that shapes our reality. And the other backside to that is Boy Scouts, which is, you know, I was in a position of leadership. I was thinking about this this morning. You know, I was what they call a senior patrol leader at maybe 14 or 15 years old. And so to be a senior leader in an organization as a youth really set me up for the framework of how I look at running a company today, Joe. And I don't think it's any different than how executives in the manufacturing space look at it as well. But, you know, I got my start doing door to door sales, selling Boy scout popcorn, probably 10, 11, 12 years old. And actually that shaped my life again. A combination of the early leadership lessons and interest in entrepreneurship, but also coupled with what I went through experiencing five heart surgeries, it just made me want to expand and live a life greater than what I was doing in my small hometown. You know, I share that. I grew up in between two corn fields in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York. And that upbringing really brought me into the awareness of life is so much bigger than I realized. It is so much more important than I previously thought, you know, before my experience dying multiple times. And so for me, I just wanted to Live a life of expansion and growth and contribution. So I got into direct sales probably at around 18 or 19 years old. I think I've only had one W2 job my entire life and for the last 10 plus years I've been 100% commission based from self employed into entrepreneurship and now really investor owner. That's how I really look at my business and the rest of my life, like I said. So I got my start in direct sales. I was in the energy space and that's really what helped propel me into renewables and sustainability using those principles and then my life experiences, I was just traveling around, going door to door, experiencing new things, learning new skills and really just opening my vision for what I thought was possible for my life. 2017, I was making the decision to move remote and get into remote work because at the time I realized the only time I could make money is when I'm knocking doors and working and. And so I was working six days a week building my skillset but really understanding what that looks like to jump from self employed into owner and really started to get those foundational skills which helped me grow into community Solar authority, which is we're a full service large scale commercial solar brokerage.

Wow. Well, you got a heck of a story and I think it's really cool how you've used some of your personal life experiences and big personal life experiences to really drive what you're doing right now. So very cool.

Yeah, I think it's worth noting too. Just one quick thing because to your point, I look at everything through the pillars of sustainability, especially from a leadership position and it's not necessarily just about running a company that way. It's really the lens that I look at through life and a lot of times, especially being in the energy space, people talk about the transition to sustainability. But just a quick plug. The way that I really look at it is a transformation through sustainability. And, and I think that where we're at now and considering where we want the future generations to be and what we want our world to look like, I think it's much less of a transition into just using like clean energy, for example. I think it's much larger than that and I think it's really a transformation process that we're all going to go through through those four pillars of sustainability.

Love it. And I guess a good transition to where I was going to what I was going to ask you about next. Heard you talk about four pillars of sustainability a few times. Can you tell us first what they are? And then I'M going to have you kind of talk about each one in more detail.

Sure. A lot of people call, it's called many different things. There's tons of acronyms for it. I think one of them is like the three Ps. So people, prosperity and planet. Along those similar lines, the way that I look at the four pillars of sustainability is human, social, business, or economic and environmental. And those lens, especially through the eyes of leadership, really can help you preserve. And again, sustainability isn't about preserving everything. It's about specifically preserving what you want to see in the future. And so using those four pillars can really help shape you as a person, as a leader, as someone who is leading in a community or a greater community, like a city or a region. And so those are the four pillars as I see it.

Right. Well, knowing that we're talking to a manufacturing leader audience today, I'd love to have you kind of talk about each of those and in the context of their worlds. First on your list is human sustainability. Tell us what that's all about.

Yeah, so like I said, it starts with ourselves and then obviously everybody else around us. And that could include management, other executives, stakeholders, workforce, clients, customers, all of it. But starting with ourselves especially, again, knowing that this is catered towards executive leadership in the manufacturing space. Again, you know, I believe that our work and really our external lives are a reflection of what's going on on the inside. So, so starting with human sustainability for ourselves and how we think about preserving, or at least how I think about preserving myself through my experiences, I think about wellness, I think about not only my physical health, but my mental and emotional knowing that those things directly impact the way that I communicate, the way that I lead, the way that I show up to my company. And really starting with yourself as a baseline and looking at the quality of your own life and what that looks like. And again, for me, through my personal experience, that's been through my physical health. I had a lot of physical trauma in my life through those surgeries. I had to show up and really figure out how to heal that and work through that. But after stepping through that, it's really about showing up and serving other people, which is what leadership is all about. I've been into Simon Sinek before I started my company, and it really started with start with why leaders eat last. But then he got into the infinite game, which is really like an operating system. And so, you know, I look at human sustainability as really enhancing the quality of life for yourself and the people that you're serving. And the people that you're around, which is really all about, you know, diving into other people. It's creating opportunities for your employees to thrive. It's thinking about things like health care. I've heard episodes where you're talking about things like changing up the work week to allow more women to come into the workforce, where they could potentially work on a weekend and have a day off during the week, and how compelling that would be. It's thinking about those small things that would, again, serve as an opportunity to grow and contribute to your mission, but using the people within your organization to do it, including yourself.

Yeah, I really like how you talk about, you know, pulling humans into the idea of sustainability. I don't know that I would have thought about that that way. But there's, you know, especially over the last 5ish years or so, there's. There's really no more important time for that right now. I mean, if manufacturing leaders aren't realizing the importance of human sustainability in their organizations now, they're probably going to be in trouble, honestly, like, given that the challenges out there with, you know, just labor, whether it's frontline or your leadership. And as we watch the, you know, the demographics of the workforce changing so much with boomers exiting at such a fast rate and challenges getting young people in, like, we have to find people, we have to retain them. We have to build cultures where they want to be here. And that's. Yeah. So I like thinking of that as an element of sustainability.

Yeah. And one more thing worth noting, too. When I think about manufacturing, I think about the backbone of the US Economy. I was someone who grew up, and I think I shared this story with you, Joe, where my dad worked night shift, so we would have supper together as a family. He would say, he called me Rupert. He'd say, rupert, you're the man of the house. And he would go off to work in his career in manufacturing. And I look at some of the other episodes that you've talked about, Joe, which is even like, preserving the knowledge of all of these exiting boomers and how that relates to business. And of course, that may be a business sustainability practice, but it goes back to the person carrying that wisdom. And wisdom is actually one of the core values of my company, because I believe that. And again, like, as an external, for generations, we've learned through our elders, originally, when we were growing up in tribes, we learned in our community inside from the wisest people. And when you look within a manufacturing framework of that, those are the people that are exiting the business that may or may not have preserved the SOPs or the wisdom of how to, you know, keep a facility operating at an efficient capacity. And when you think about human sustainability, it's definitely something that you want to consider in terms of how am I preserving my business for the future. How are we making sure that this is going to remain in business? And just a quick plug, you know, I started my company on a thesis which is that the more sustainable you are, the more likely you remain in business for the long term. And again, if manufacturing truly is the backbone of the US economy, which I believe it is, because at its core, it's all about creating. And in order to build and build on the economy, you have to create more. Right. And that doesn't necessarily mean endless growth, but it means sustainable growth. And that definitely starts with humans.

Great perspective. I'm totally on board with that. Well, we're talking about four pillars of sustainability here. The first one was human sustainability. Second one on your list, Dakota, I believe, is social sustainability. Can you break that one down for us?

Yeah, totally. You know, I think about social sustainability, and for me, I look at it as how I want to use my company to make an impact in our local communities or greater communities, which for us can look like a lot of initiatives, but especially in the sustainability space. We love working with, you know, vulnerable communities, for example, senior housing, nonprofits, low income. These are all places that are often overlooked and need our support again if we're going to build a thriving community. It's all about making sure that people are taken care of, making sure that people show up feeling safe. You know, I was just reading an article today on the Wall street journal on St. Louis, which is a city that we share.

And I don't remember that one as well, unfortunately. Yes, it was a tough one to read, honestly.

Yeah, it was a tough swallow. And, you know, I believe that of course, our reality is up to our own interpretation. And I'll keep my feelings about the Wall Street Journal aside, but I think about the social impact of manufacturing in a city and, you know, again, I'll reference. I don't know his last name. It was drew in episode 58, talking about how you can bring diversity and that workforce into the manufacturing community. And I'll just give another brief example. Shout out to my friend Mike Durkin up at VIP Structures, which is an architect firm in Syracuse, New York, which is the area I'm from. And, you know, they are an architect firm. They have a big HQ downtown. It's called the Post Building. Beautiful building. He Gave me a tour of it as they were building it. And one of the sections of that building, Joe, was a perfect place for light manufacturing shop. And him and I discussed, like, how you can bring manufacturing to a downtown area and that has a huge social impact. Places like Syracuse also have a very diverse, greater city population where you can provide jobs and bolster the economy and support the people living within your downtown area. And you could do that with manufacturing. So I think about social sustainability again, in terms of protecting people, sharing the economic growth and the opportunities that are available, using diversity to again, preserve and build and make sure that it's equitable for everybody and really promote those values that are going to foster a strong community. Again, that can look on the inside of your business, but it can also look on the outside of your business, which is what nonprofits are you supporting? What local initiatives are you doing unrelated to manufacturing? Well, actually, I guess not. You know, first form, for example, manufacturing supplement manufacturer in St. Louis. Half a billion dollar company. Their community outreach is amazing. They just had a couple of weeks ago everybody meet up on a Saturday. They'll bring their community, which is, you know, their customers, their employees, everybody gets together and we're going to do a citywide cleanup because we're proud to be from St. Louis. And that was part of the 314 day initiative that is promoting social sustainability. And again, back to the Wall Street Journal. They were talking about, you know, how it's doom and gloom and really I think about, well, how do you reinspire a city? Or what do you need to put into a city to revitalize it, especially a downtown area. And to me, it's security, safety and hope, which is inspiration. And like literally those two things, feelings of safety and feelings that it can get better and it will, that is enough for a thriving economic community. And again, manufacturing can absolutely play a role in that, especially in St. Louis, where we have all of these warehouses, all of these available opportunities, where it just takes the right entrepreneur to say, hey, you know what? I'm going to come and create something which again, goes back to sustainability in the human sense. And really that's how it all intertwines in my perspective.

Yeah, all good stuff there. I this reminds me immediately of episode. I'm looking at my here, episode 184, which was in December of 2023, a few months back. Elias Stahl was my guest and he is a founder of company called Hylos H I L O S that is. And this was what his whole episode was about for him, it was in Portland, Oregon for him. He was, he's kind of reinventing an element of the supply chain through 3D printing, specifically in, in the footwear space. And there his whole mission is to bring sustainable manufacturing, like on demand manufacturing through additive, additive manufacturing back into the urban core of big American cities. Super cool. And what's cool is you think about how versus traditional manufacturing where huge equipment, large facilities, everywhere. I think his thought process is we can start doing this at a smaller scale by having this on demand 3d printed supply chain that could frankly be set up just about anywhere. And it's one way we can bring manufacturing back into the urban cores and also bring, bring the people in that city who otherwise wouldn't even know that manufacturing careers are an option for them. And you know, and you think about like the way retail's dying, the, you know, the limited options that people may feel like they have for, for careers. Well here you have really high tech manufacturing technology that is creating job opportunities for people. So yeah, I really like your perspective on this. I'm hearing it from different angles from more people, which gets me excited to think there's, you know, maybe we're on the precipice of something here.

Yes. Yeah, no, I think that's a great segue into the next section which is all about business sustainability. And shout out to Elias, because that's exactly what I'm talking about is changing the perspective on even what people think manufacturing is. Because to your point, you know, I grew up where we have a nuclear plant, we have Novelis, which is where my dad works, which is a large aluminum recycling plant. But you know, back to our core values at Community Solar Authority, one is sustainability, which is the pretty obvious answer. But the other one's efficiency, which is obviously an offshoot and semi related. But the idea of being able to bring high tech manufacturing in an efficient manner in a, you know, 800 square foot office space, for example, versus having a need for a 200,000 square foot plant. We can literally use the idea of a more efficient way to manufacture as a sustainable practice to build an entirely bright future, whether that's in a downtown metropolitan area or the rural country, again for those same exact reasons, is there are massive opportunities. But when I think about business sustainability, again, this is everything that's going on inside of your business in order to preserve it. And a lot of times I do a lot of executive coaching. Fun fact. I've been studying hypnosis and the unconscious mind for like over 10 years now. Ever since my heart surgeries as a way to heal myself. But what I actually learned is all of these high performance coaching skills. And oftentimes when I'm talking to other executives or business owners, they're like telling me everything that they don't want. And they're like, I don't want my employees to leave, I don't want to feel this way. And I'm like, okay, well flip all of those things and tell me what you do want. And again, the preservation isn't about keeping everything in your business model. It's as an executive leader looking into the moving pieces of your business and deciding what you do want to keep. And there's a huge distinction there because when we're focused on what we don't want, that's what we usually get. As a matter of fact, we usually get whatever we're focused on because where energy goes, energy flows. And that's a huge piece to it. And so I'm looking at the sustainability practices inside of manufacturing businesses, which obviously we look at through the lens of commercial solar. But this could look like your culture, again, going back to the people within your business, which is blending human sustainability. But how does that relate to your core values, to the things that you teach and preach, to the way that you treat your employees and the culture that you have within it. And really, as a leader, again, going back to the boy Scouts, it's about the responsibility to have a positive impact and showing up to be able to do that. And so again, there are many different business practices that you can implement inside of your business. And when you look at it through sustainability or efficiency or, you know, wisdom, which again, I had kind of mentioned earlier, all of a sudden you start to figure out, you start to plant the seeds for what's possible. And again, it's not so much a transition into a more sustainable manufacturing business, it is a transformation of what that is going to look like so that that company can stay around for years to come. Whether you want to sell it and exit the business or you want to build it and pass it down into your family, you know, or any other example, ESOPs, if you want to pass it down to your employees, you want to be able to build. And really, again, as part of being a leader is that responsibility that comes along with it is nobody wants something that isn't built to last and nobody wants to buy a business to have it fall apart. And so again, it's not necessarily about just clean energy, it's about looking at all of the different threads within your business that is helping it become more resilient. Because again, the more sustainable you are, the more resilient practices you have inside your business, the more likely it is to stay alive. And again, when you look at that and think about that, beyond yourself, beyond your employees, beyond your clients, beyond the community and really what that looks like as a whole, I think about business. You know, we literally call them entities, Joe. And this may be a little esoteric, but we call businesses entities. And when I think about what an entity is, it is something that is carrying a message or an idea or a mission. And when we create powerful companies that can make positive impacts that care about our community, I think we're going to transform into an entirely new future of business. And again, manufacturing has the opportunity to be the backbone of that. And so those are a couple threads as far as how I think about business sustainability.

Okay, let's take a quick break here. I want to let a couple of our strategists at Gorilla 76 tell you about something pretty cool that we're doing right now for marketing folks in the manufacturing sector. Peyton and Brendan, take it away.

So, I'm Peyton Warren.

And I'm Brendan Forrest.

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We'd love to see you there.

So we're talking here about four pillars of sustainability. First one we talked about was human sustainability. Second one was social sustainability, the third was business sustainability. And the fourth one's probably where a lot of our heads naturally go, which is environmental sustainability. Talk about that one for us.

Yeah, Environmental sustainability, to me, again, you know, I started. I grew up in the woods. I was born in the country. I was a Boy Scout, so I was camping every single weekend. It felt like. And to me, having a connection and relationship with nature will absolutely change your perspective as a human being. Because when we start to see ourselves as interconnected and part of a greater ecosystem, all of a sudden life starts to expand well beyond our little small selves. And when you can look at that perspective and want to start to take care of the environment, and oftentimes especially solar gets very politicized and polarized because of the politics involved in how do we choose to move forward about protecting our planet? What is true and what is not true, as far as the way that we talk about energy and decarbonization and ESG and all of these buzzwords. But at its core, Joe, I look at environmental sustainability as practically managing our natural resources. And again, that doesn't just necessarily need to be from an energy perspective or an ESG perspective that can really look like showing up and making sure communities are clean. Again, like, you go downtown, St. Louis. One of the things I admired about St. Louis, actually, when I lived downtown for a period, is they've got a street cleanup team, which maybe is common in major metropolitan areas, but I've lived in a lot of places, and really St. Louis was the only place where I saw that they had their little purple shirts on. So you knew who it was. And they had a commitment to keep our environments clean. And again, that reflects back into the social sustainability perspectives, which is really how we look at and relate to our external environment, but environmental sustainability as it relates to energy and solar and is again, going back to the transition from brown dirty energy into more renewable and cleaner resources. And so a plug into the work that we're doing, Joe, is. And I was asked this the other day on a different podcast, which I think maybe gave them a surprise answer. And it was essentially, Dakota, do you think we should be run on 100% solar? And really, it was more like, Dakota, tell us why we should be. Because that's how they were looking at it. And I was like, well, guys, hold on. I don't necessarily believe that to be true. I don't think that we should be 100% run on a specific. Because, again, the whole idea of just using a singular source isn't a sustainable practice. And so, again, it's really not about cutting down one side of the conversation or blocking out the other. It's really about finding the harmony between that. The same exact way that we find harmony in living with nature. You know, we build, again, maybe a little esoteric, we build boxes around ourselves to live inside to say that we're outside of our natural environment, but we're a part of it, whether we like it or not. And it's up to us to be able to preserve that and think about how we're going to do that. And again, a lot of the work that we're doing is in the energy space and then obviously promoting a lot of our core values into our strategic partnerships and clients that we work with, which are manufacturers, municipalities, large consumers of electricity. We help them think through environmental sustainability, business sustainability, and allow that to have a trickle down effect into the people that work for them, the missions that they have, and the communities that they're a part of.

Well, very nice. Well, I appreciate you running through all four of those. I think it's, it's just an interesting and maybe different way of thinking about sustainability when you look at it in those four buckets. Not where my head would have normally gone. So I love the being able to look at that through a little bit of a different lens. And Dakota, I know you've mentioned a few times here your personal area of expertise or where you've built your business is obviously in solar. Haven't talked about it a lot on this show. There was one episode, it was all the way back in, I think early 2022. I interviewed the president of Phoenix Contact. Many of you listening probably know that company, Jack Nalig, and the title of that episode was the All Electric Society. And he had this sort of prescient, you know, vision of a future that frankly his company is starting to do. I think they're running their entire manufacturing facility in Arizona off of solar panels and or at least vast majority of it. And they've just been sort of building it bit by bit by bit and transferring more of the, or converting more of the power that the facility runs on to solar powered. They've got stations set up for their employees, you know, electric cars that have solar panels that are then charging the cars. So they're not running off clock or whatever. This is speaking out. This is not my world. But I'd love to just hear your perspective on solar specifically and what's the opportunity there? What do manufacturing leaders need to know about what's possible and why this should matter to them?

I love it. Yeah, I'll give you a brief background just for context. So I co founded Community Solar Authority over half a decade ago at this point as a way to help deploy renewable access specifically to large users of electricity. And so a lot of our work has obviously included manufacturing in that space. And when I think about the landscape of large scale commercial solar, I think about the opportunity again to utilize it from a internal perspective, but then also as a value add perspective. And so, for example, what I'm seeing is different things like on site solar, like you had just referenced, where there are panels that are powering the facility, there are carports with solar on them that are charging the EV chargers that are powering the solar cars. Those are a subset of all things that I call on site solar. But Joe, there are also opportunities with things like off site solar, which is a lot of the work that we do in the community solar space. And community solar is more of a business sustainability practice than it is environmental. But a quick look at how that works are in exchange for participating in a local solar project. And this is state level legislation. So states like New York, Illinois, Maryland, California, there are a slew of other states opening for community solar. In exchange for participating in a local solar project off site, you just sign up your utility account and produce power on that site. You receive a guaranteed bill, credit back onto your utility bill and the wind up. In the pitch for manufacturers, Joe is on a $0 investment without installing solar and without having to do much effort at all other than enrolling into it. In exchange for helping clean up energy grids in your region and displaying environmental stewardship, you get access to guaranteed lower electricity costs. And that is one simple strategy that we pull out of our sustainability playbook in the commercial solar space. But it's one that really plants the seeds to what's possible. Not just what else is possible in the space of energy, but everything else that we've discussed today. Because again, when we can use sustainability practices inside our business to help large manufacturers literally increase operating profits on a $0 investment without any work that inspires people, that plants the seeds to something greater, to greater efficiencies in all areas. And so there's on site, there's off site, but then there's kind of a combination of the two, Joe, and it kind of completes the landscape of how I'm seeing it, which is solar leasing. The roof may be the most important piece to any given commercial property, and it's also one of the most underdeveloped when we look at roof. And this goes the same for Raw land. But when we look at manufacturers roofs or the land surrounding it, we see a huge opportunity for value add with solar leasing where, you know, again, my company serves as consultants to some of the most significant solar developers in the country. We have a streamlined mission of deploying access to these renewable assets as these incentives come online. And it's a trillion dollar industry. So there's a massive opportunity for manufacturers to plug and play in any given field here, leasing on site, off site and take advantage of the available incentives. And our company streamlines it all for you so that it's very turnkey. But when I think about solar leasing is we can take a 200,000 plus square foot roof that otherwise just has a couple H vac systems on it and is maybe rotting away and we can put value add solar leasing on that to where they're not taking on the power, but it is on site that energy is being sold back into the grid for community solar project. And now all of a sudden they're accessing passive income on an annual basis for 20 to 25 years as a way to improve the operating profits of their facilities. And so that's how I kind of see the landscape is a little bit of, a little bit of everything we're seeing on site projects, off site projects, and then you know, this big opportunity in solar leasing.

Yeah, I love it. And three great ways to, to look at it. I think something that I've heard a few times, I've heard different people talk about sustainability on this show and like that big question to ask is like when a business, everything sounds great to a business leader about running a more sustainable business. And then all of a sudden they're forced to make a decision between sustainability and profitability and you know, where they usually go. But I, I like how you've really painted a picture of the business case. That is something that's there for, to help the environment and like the future of this planet. And it's there to help your company too. And I mean it just feels like a win win to me.

Yeah, we call it triple win synergy because all of you know, transparently. I've built my business through partnerships, Joe, which is a sustainable business practice. And so we run lean principles. It's myself, my two other co founders and our support staff. We don't carry employees inside of our business, but we've chosen to grow through strategic partnerships. And for us, I'll give you an example of the triple win synergy is we'll partner with like digital marketing companies, which is something I'm really excited about right now. Traditionally, it's been energy companies who are taking care of manufacturers. You know, maybe they're their energy consultants doing their rates and procurement and efficiency work. We'll become a bolt on partner for these energy companies and then they'll be able to give their clients access to our work. And so we're getting work done by deploying renewable access, the end users benefiting because they are receiving savings from our work and sustainability. And then our partner is taking a portion of that revenue through our relationship because they're promoting our work. And so I call it triple win synergy. And I think that's what the future of business is going to look like. But just as another business use case, something that I'm really excited about is partnering with digital marketing companies. You know, I'm working on one right now where they just do digital marketing. They serve a lot of our end users in upstate New York. And the idea is that we can use our work, which is turnkey. We've been doing it for six years. We've done it for national retailers and municipalities and water authorities and everything in between. And we deliver turnkey access to essentially free savings. But then with the marketing company, we partner with them to turn it into a sustainability marketing campaign because there is data showing that the end consumers of people purchasing products want to see companies with sustainability practices in play. And so what we're actually doing, Joe, is we're giving them access to free savings and improving their operating profit. It cost them $0. It took 0 time out of their day to do. But then we're leveraging the power of social media, which obviously you're super familiar with, because now we can use that to tell a new story and we can use that to talk about what the future of manufacturing actually looks like. And, you know, case in point, we just finished up a couple in upstate New York. One was for a spring maker and they saved $25,000 a year, compounding, it took us less than 90 days, less than five hours of their time, and it cost them $0. And now we're going to promote that. We're going to talk about it in the paper. We're going to use it to send emails to end customers and just share a good news story. Again, it's not greenwashing in a sense where we're 100% sustainable and all of this stuff is happening. It's no, here's how we're thinking about using sustainability principles to improve the way we show up to the world and Again, I think that's just a beautiful tie back to all of the things that we talked about today because it goes so much further than saving people money for free. Like that's a great wind up and pitch and that's oftentimes what we're doing in our work with clean energy. But I hope that you can see how it directly ties to our greater mission. The way that I look at leadership in general, but really showing up to the world and carrying out a mission that impacts more than just myself, more than just my business, more than just my community, but really inspiring other people to go through this transformational process using sustainability principles.

So Dakota, can you tell us tell our listeners where they can learn more about what you guys are doing at Community Solar Authority and how they can get in touch with you?

Yes. So our website, communitysolarauthority.com, but I actually encourage people to find me on LinkedIn. So if you enjoyed any portion of what we talked about today, I am talking about all four pillars of sustainability. As someone who's creating content every single day on LinkedIn, I'm oftentimes talking about it through the lens of commercial solar, the work that we're doing, the case studies that we're going through. But there are opportunities for you to reach out, get some more value from me, from the things that I talk about again through all four pillars. And I'd love to connect with people on LinkedIn. So it's just LinkedIn.com in Dakotam alone.

Fantastic. Well, really good conversation, Dakota. Appreciate you doing this.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Joe. And again, congrats on all the success on the podcast and I hope that everybody finds value in today's conversation.

I appreciate that and I'm sure they will. As for the rest of you, I hope to catch you on the next episode of the Manufacturing Executive.

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