Hello and welcome to the top floor podcast. This is the Denver edition. I am your host, Darren Kanthal. This is episode number seven, and I am pleased to introduce or at least say hello to Mr. Cody Kapplinger. Hey, Dan, thank you for having me on. I'm excited to be here with you today. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So I've said this repeatedly now because you're my seventh one. In my very first podcast, I got excited, forgot to introduce the guest or introduce his company. So before I get too far down the line, please take a moment to introduce yourself. Sure. My name is Cody Kapplinger, CEO and co-founder of ClickSolar. Here in Colorado, we also operate in Oregon. And yeah, just excited to be on the podcast today. All right. What is ClickSolar? ClickSolar is a residential solar company that focuses primarily on premium solar installs for homeowners. And yeah, could I cut you off? I apologize. No, you're good. Okay. All right. So we were talking offline and you're growing. And you said you are, if I heard correctly, you are hiring. Is that right? That's right. We're always looking for sales reps. It's becoming harder and harder to find people that are motivated and hard-working, but we're constantly looking for sales reps. And if anybody wants to look at what it would look like joining our team, you can reach out to me directly through social media on Instagram or call into our office. My Instagram handle is @CodyCappy. And that's probably the easiest way to reach me. Okay. Perfect. Let's just take a moment since we're here. And if there's anybody listening that might be qualified or know someone's qualified, what are some of the characteristics or qualifications you look for in your sales folks? Yeah, grit, the ability or desire to want to learn communication skills and time management skills and be able to really get mentally tough because selling solar can be challenging. And a lot of this door to door. And that teaches you a lot really quickly. And yeah, we're looking for people that are just eager and hungry and want to learn so that we can foster them into success in our company. Okay, cool beans. You have a buddy of mine that just left corporate America. He he's going the financial advisor route. And he is literally knocked on doors. And he said it's a trip. He said he has he his best story or stories are the ones where the front door is open. There's a screen door. He's standing there. And the person walks up and just shuts the door in his face. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that would probably create a pretty awkward moment. Yeah, it was it was. And to his credit, he laughed it off. I got to give him credit. I'm not sure I'd be so graceful. But what can you do? Right? Yeah, that's that's right. You meet some characters out there. That's for sure. Yeah. All right. So I don't know a lot about your story. And I kind of do that on purpose. But I do know you started your business in 2019. Is that correct? Yep, that's right. Okay. How did you get into this business? Yeah, good question. So I originally came from the mattress industry or previous to this. And the mattress industry is a lot of fun. I loved it. But in the retail space, a lot of that's transition online. If you've heard like purple mattress and tuft and needle. And so the industry was dying in my eyes, the retail mattress stores, along with that is it didn't matter how much we spent on marketing. It could snow and nobody would come into the store. So I could fire all the sales reps up. I could be fired up myself. And then you just sit there and twiddle your thumbs all day, kind of waiting for a customer to come in the door. And with solar, I started researching what what's an industry that's future proof. And landed on solar. So I thought, Hey, this is going to be on every roof that that will this will work with. And in the future, it's the it's it's really important for our integrity of the power grid. And then I found out that it's mostly done from knocking doors. So we get to control the door swings and opportunities that we get as a company based on our sales force and how driven they are and how well we train them to go out and serve the community. All right. So maybe give us just a little window knocking on doors in and of itself is had its own knack and nuance. What are some of the best openers or how do you how do you like maximize the chance that someone's even going to taught you in the first place? Yeah, good question. So we we operate a little bit differently. And you know, I call it the anti salesman tactic. In my eyes, nobody likes the feeling of being sold, but everybody likes to go shopping with their friends. And so we try to teach a very approachable approachable stance. We typically have our sales rep stand way back from the door, usually off to a side nice and relaxed, pretty casual. And, you know, usually our opening our opening lines are going to be commenting on something in their yard or on their porch. Maybe it's their door mat. We've seen some hilarious door mats out there where I have personally. And just being real and creating a friend out there and, you know, truly, solar is good for everybody. And so we we it's a it sells itself. We just want to be able to get the opportunity to explain it properly. And the best way to do that is to get a genuine connection with a human being and open up that door for opportunity. Okay, wonderful. You would share with me that and I'm just looking at my notes over here. Yeah, three years, you grew from nothing, no loan or money within three years, you grew the company of 30 million dollars. We did. Yep, 30 million in revenue. And, you know, I didn't. We did as a company. We've had that and that's really the key is we've had a really incredible team. I think one of the superpowers, and I'm not even sure how we were so lucky, but we've attracted some of the best human beings in the world to work for us. And they've really been the driving force in creating that kind of growth that's propelled us to be a leader that and always taking care of the customer. Have been the driving things that have really helped us in business to succeed that fast. Okay. Question for you. Have you heard this buzzy word out there today called psychological safety? You know, I might I might have heard it from I might have heard it from you offline before this. Okay. But my recollection of it's actually pretty rough. So you might have to remind me what that's about. Okay, fair enough. So I don't know that the definition it's well, what am I trying to say? I don't know the dictionary definition myself, but I've got my own own way of describing it. The reason I'm asking the question is because when you talk about having this great team and talk about we, I get that and I lean into it. The second part to having a great team and having we is the quote unquote psychological safety to speak up freely, to disagree, to debate, but to do so in a place that is safe without fear of retribution or retaliation to the fact where if you're my CEO, I can say Cody, I don't agree with you and here's why. And even if you're like, thank you, Darren. I appreciate it, but we're still going to do this other thing. That's okay. So my question to you is how have you created this safe environment for the Wii to excel? Yeah, well, since day one, we've really encouraged people to bring things up. We have a policy, we call it puking up in the company. You know, this job's hard. Every part of this company is hard and the what makes it a lot harder is water cooler talk. You know, people that are spreading negativity are complaining about different things. And we know, as a company, I know that there's things that we definitely need to improve on and get better at. And so we have kind of a no negativity allowed policy unless you're puking up, you're always allowed to bring that to your manager. All the way up to me, I make that abundantly clear to every new person that my door, I have a sliding door, a glass door, and it doesn't lock. So my door literally doesn't lock. I have an open door policy. And sometimes, you know, those things are people are in the trenches and they bring that to us and it really helps shape the company. So in creating that safety has been incredibly important. And it's funny you say that because my wife and I went to a really cool couples event last year. And one of the things they taught the men's side of it is how important safety is. And that was really an unlock for me. I think I've been pretty good at that in my life. But it's something that I've been constantly focusing on is the environment of creating safety puts everybody at ease and allows for for flow to happen. Either in your marriage or in business, it doesn't really matter, right? But the environment of being able to create that kind of unprecedented safety is is crucial. All right, you know, I love that you just opened that door step into it. One of the things that you and I talked about and for our listeners is really the human experience is shared, right? Just so happens, we're a podcast talking to CEOs and presidents and founders and still the human experience is shared. So you talked about this really cool event with your wife on the male side talking about safety. Maybe go a little deeper. What were the things they had shared about safety and what are some of the things that you employ these days? Yeah, so well, I learned a lot in that event. And so there's a trying to figure out what to unpack on that. So what I learned that how important it is as a leader to calm your nervous system down and how much that creates safety for people. And one of the ways that they taught us is breath work to do that, which has been really crucial. And sometimes just being able to pause and give yourself some time to digest something before holding space for a group or an individual can create a calmness in your nerves and safety in yourself that then you can hold a container for other people to do. And if you come at something, it's the same thing with knocking doors. But if you come at something with a high level of energy and charge, good or bad, the other person is likely going to reflect that energy to you. And so that's part of it, right? Being able to calm yourself in those moments when you're extra charged to be able to create that safety for someone else. And ultimately it's about not taking whatever the conversation is. For example, what you said, what brought us into this is you asking about creating safety and employee conversations. The shift in this is marital or in business is, hey, is this person saying something that I could take offensively that would maybe I felt really strongly about instead of learning about and kind of diving in or leaning in to curiosity of, hey, what are they getting at? Why is this their perspective and what value is there here for us to talk about? And oftentimes things that would have felt like an attack. Are things that I agree with them on. Both my wife and them, it's like, yeah, you know what? That is a real problem. And I can totally see how that would feel that way for you. And what are some ways we can get better at that? And ultimately that's created a lot of safety. And I learned that partially, some of that has been natural, but partially from that couple's retreat is how important that is to stay grounded in those situations and bring that safety. All right, I'm gonna ask you more a personal thing, not like the most personal, but you personally. And for full disclosure is I struggle with getting hijacked in the moment. Okay. I get the breath work and I don't mean that as like I understand, conceptually like I understand I do some of this work. Yeah, what I'm curious about, the personal question is how do you personally, as you're getting trigger or hijacker elevated, how do you de elevate? How do I de elevate? Yeah, well, for starters, hey, I'm human. And it's not always, it's nothing, nothing has ever always been successful at this. So I have kind of a toolbox of things. And it depends on the environment, right? If it's a conversation where I'm starting to feel, feel charged, one thing that I found that's been really effective for me personally is holding my breath a little bit. Instead of taking a deep breath, holding it for a little bit, there's an incredible book, I think it's called Breath that talks about this. And it's a way to be able to calm your nerves. And so I'll hold my breath for a little bit. Another way is has been box breathing, which is in for four seconds, hold for four seconds, out for four seconds. We're trying to breathe down to the lower part of your belly. And so some of those things have have been effective and helped. Sometimes it's just getting outside and going on a walk. If it's a situation that just is a doozy, sometimes for me, it's a matter of just getting out into nature, or exercising my body some way that I can get out and discharge that. And naturally, I just seem to feel a lot better. So that along with the fact that I've gotten a little bit better of trying to set expectations, something I'm working on right now, setting expectations that, hey, I don't, I don't, I don't love being surprised. So if we can, if I can have an idea of what the meeting is about, I can start digesting it before we have it and maybe be a little bit more open to I will definitely be more open in the conversation and trying to set that as a standard within the company. I so relate to what you're saying. So my partner Rachel and I have partnered in business just recently. Oh, awesome. And a lot of our personal stuff bleeds into business and vice versa. Now for me is my work is I get irritated rather quickly. And irritation shows itself in impatience. I bite like I get pretty pointed. You definitely hear it in my voice and you definitely see it on my face. And interestingly, over the months and years that I've been working on personal growth is sometimes with Rachel, when I'm starting to get triggered is I audibly exhale and I look up to the right. And when I first started doing it, she'd be like, what was that? And she doesn't bark the way I do. But that's how I hear. Right. And then my response, when I can't breathe, you know, but the breath was meant to try to chill me out before I attack. Yeah. And when you talk about the breath work, like when I say I get it, I get like I work on that. I really appreciate the holding in the breath. That's a good trick. Yeah, it's been it's been really effective for me. I don't remember all the parts of it that why it's effective. But and what's funny, I knew I liked you, but my wife's name is Rachel too. Oh, wow. And so you're talking about those moments with Rachel and obviously relatable, because I have a Rachel. And I think she's called me out for for, you know, just taking a big breath in the middle of an argument as well. And hey, man, you got to ground yourself however you can. I think it's just it. I'm sure how that work out with you and Rachel, did you did you explain how that how why you did what you did? And was I received well? Yes, generally speaking, yes. You know, I, I give my Rachel a lot of credit. She's a little more calm than I am. And she doesn't get triggered by my trigger. She's able to deescalate me so to speak. That's awesome. Yeah. Your does your Rachel do the same? Yeah, she she just, I have to be able to explain it not in the heat of the moment. Yes. And it's received extremely well. She's very good at understanding that. And there's, you know, there's other tricks that I do to remain a little bit more calm and grounded through the week. And that's something we've worked with in our relationship, one of which is on, on Sunday nights, I, we have a house that has a basement. And the basement's always dark. It's cool. It's a great place to sleep, but it's not our master bedroom. And so on Sunday nights, Rachel and I, she lets me go down to the basement. After we put our son to sleep at 7pm. And that's when I get to journal, I'm watching some educational videos to set me in the right mindset for the week. And, and just get really grounded. It's quieter down there. And I've found that that's had a crazy impact on my week and how emotionally grounded I am throughout then is just having that opportunity. But a first that came off as, Hey, you want to sleep divorce? I'm like, Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's not where I'm getting out with this. And over some, some conversations, she came around to it. And now she's, she's even looking forward, forward to it for me, which is really cool to have that kind of support in my life. All right. So that's one of your routines, a Sunday night routine of this journaling and education videos and sometimes yourself. Yep. Yep. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Are there any, so on the educational videos, is there anyone specific you follow or particular topics that you look at? Yeah, I love, right now I love Dan Martell. He's, he's the author of Buyback Your Time. And really been resonating with his content. And I'm trying to think of who else I've, I really like, there's a guy, he just came out with a Netflix show, Ryan Serhan. Ryan Serhan, that guy cracks me up. His videos are hilarious. But for me, it's a lot about just getting in a good mood to start the week. And I have developed over the years a Sunday night anxiety for the week to come. And being able to knock that out and put myself in a positive frame with really any, any educational or self-improvement content has been super effective. It affects my mood the next morning. And all through the night, I'm able to sleep, it's great. I don't know exactly what to say either to commend you for that routine. But there's a lot of people that have anxieties or issues or things that they don't do anything about. And the fact that you recognize that you had these Sunday anxieties, the case of the Mondays, I think some people call it whatever, right? The Sunday scaries or something. But anyway, the fact that you created a routine to positively impact the anxiety, like it's remarkable. That's huge. I love it. Well, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Looking at my notes again, my eyes are not wondering. So you had mentioned to me, one of the things that I made a note of is, let me just find it real quick, that you said as a father, a CEO, and a husband, I learned quickly how to lean into curiosity. Yeah. And I made that note. I mean, what a wonderful thing to say. Expand upon it. What did you learn about the curiosity, how to use it? Yeah. So, you know, a lot of people, I've always wanted to be a dad. It's the best thing that's ever happened to me. And a husband, I have an incredible two, three, almost three-year-old in October. And my wife are incredible. But going from just being married to having a kid while running a business was beyond challenging for me and charged. And, you know, with that, I've had to kind of relearn how to be a business owner and learn while I'm learning how to be a dad. And while my wife is healing from having a baby. And so part of that's been leaning into my curiosity on what's charging me and why? Why am I getting this anxiety or upset? By the way, I never really experienced anxiety in my life until my son came. So this is kind of a new thing for me. I'm by no, no means if I figured it out. But, you know, owning a business, it's, it's, it's at the time it was like having 100 and 150 kids at work 40, 50, 60 hours a week. Coming home to one that really deserves my all of my attention and love and my wife. And so getting curious about, hey, why am I feeling this anxiety? Getting curious about, hey, how can I restructure my life and my, my time that I have to make sure that I'm present with everybody, both at the company and at home. And, you know, in every situation, just getting, reminding myself to be curious has landed me somewhere better. If that makes sense. It makes great sense. It's funny when I asked the question, I in my head, assumed the curiosity would have been more external facing. And as you answered, it sounded like it was more internal facing, more curious about yourself. Yeah, I would say so. I would say so. Absolutely. I mean, there's definitely some external ones. You got to get curious about why the hell your kids cry and write or won't sleep. Or, yeah, you also get curious, how am I going to operate with no sleep from the night before? Because they've been up all night. And, you know, being a, being a dad, I think is one of, it's, it's easily, I used to say this about business, but it's easily twice as hard as anybody will tell you it's going to be. But it's easily 10 times as rewarding. And so I gave everybody I know that has, that was, is a dad. I gave them some crap like, Hey, you didn't warn me about this, man, there is, this is a lot more than I thought I was biting off. And to be fair, a lot of my friends have had some pretty easy kids. But yeah, it's really, it was a really challenging moment in my life to, to really learn and grow personally as a, as a, as a business owner, how to hold more space and a bigger container, and how to be able to do that in my personal life with literally a bigger container with another child and their family member. Yeah, I get this real strong sense that your business growth and your personal growth have been in this parallel where they're both, you know, elevating your increasing or getting better together. Yeah. Yeah, there's definitely, there's definitely a connection, a connection with those. Sometimes it's, it's not always that way. Sometimes the personal growth is what's going through the roof. And sometimes the business is what's going through the, the roof. So they're not always in parallel. But yeah, they're going to go hand in hand in the long term and that I'm confident of. Okay, cool. What are some of the things that we're, we're, let me stop. Slow down. We're nearing the last quarter of the year. Yep, what's, what's left on the table for you in 24? Yeah, so I'm really excited. I want to, I'm going to start a podcast. I've had a podcast in the past and really take it seriously. And I've gotten kind of fired up recently about restarting one. It's going to be called the pressure, pressure is a privilege podcast, where I'm going to interview similar guests to what you have on, on here. And I'm really excited about that and learning more about content creation and how that's going to help the, the business. And this has been a very interesting, challenging year being an election year. And so we feel that the rest of the year is really bright for us as a company. People are starting to get a little bit more grounded with this election election. And they're starting to feel it's almost over, right? I mean, we have a couple more months and we can finally put this to, to, to rest. So there's a real opportunity in that we're talking about safety earlier. I think the country is about to feel a level of safety, no matter which side they're on, just in the fact that the ambiguity is over with and they know what way our country is going to go and how to plan around that. And we're really excited to capitalize on that and be able to, to be, to be ready for it when it happens. Yeah. Something you had said to me more when we first met and please don't let me miss speak and not take too many liberties. You talked about just now the challenging year of 24, which I assume and if I remember correctly, revenues are a little down for you. Is that as revenues are down, what, what have you and your partners, your executive team, et cetera? What have you done to a set yourself up for future growth, but also to keep everyone motivated? Yeah, absolutely. It's, you know, we've done a whole host of things from reducing our expenses this year because it has been a challenging year. The interest rates have not been a, been favorable for us financing solar to homeowners. And the election year creates a lot of, of ambiguity. People have a hard time making decisions on years like this. So we've learned how to get a lot more efficient with what we have. And we've started the first part of it was cutting expenses and that rapidly turned into how do we create better processes within the company to make the pipeline flow. So in solar, it's a little bit complicated from sale. We don't just get to go install on the, on the roof the next day. We have to go through engineering. We have to do permitting work with the utility. And so we don't, as a company, make any money until the job is installed. Typically, that can take a couple of months. And so the shorter that time window is and more efficient, then the happier our sales reps are, our customers are, and the better the company is sitting as far as a cash flow perspective. And so we've really focused in on dialing in our processes. We've reinvented our CRM, which is, that's the, the ultimate and terrible things to me. I hate softwares. And we've, we've really gotten to a point where we can automate as much as we can, with still putting as much of a human touch as, as possible on the customer side, that's really set us up so we can handle a significant amount of volume with it costing the company a lot less money. I would have, I wish I would have learned this the first time around because it would have been a lot better when we were doing 30 million in revenue, but it's incredibly valuable lessons that we've learned. Okay. When you talked about grit earlier in the characteristics of your sales people, I think about that too, for you and your company, right there. I remember hearing or reading this thing a while ago about the companies that I'll say, this is too strong of a word, but the companies that survive economic downturns are often the ones that will accelerate and thrive when we're through it because of the grit and the perseverance. And yes, you took some operational and tactical decisions and, right, the CRM and operationalizing things and creating new processes and procedure. I mean, that only, I should rephrase, I would assume that is only going to set you up for even greater success, 25 and beyond. Yeah, I'm 100% certain that's the case. And I hope so. That's where we put all of our eggs in that basket of making sure we're ready for it because I'm confident it's going to happen. And that's the lens you have to look at I think of as a business owner. And in this climate, you know, there's some industries that are crushing right now. But a lot of industries are really hurting right now. And it's interesting to watch who's hitting the easy button and tapping out. And so the ones that are really not only just keeping their head above water, but trying to figure out how to make themselves better as time goes on, that I think are going to do really, really well in 2025. Yeah. There's one thing that you said earlier, I wanted to come back to you. I made a mental note and then remember forgot until just now, you had talked about getting curious about people's perspectives. And I remember as a younger man, I regularly assume negative. I assume that you did something viciously or sinister to, you know, fuck me over, hurt me, whatever. And I had had this boss that must have got tired of my nonsense or whatever. And she taught me this concept of API assume positive intent, which is if I take what you did negatively, to like play the mind game of well, assume that you didn't do it to hurt me and assume that you did it with a positive intent and then be curious about that. Like, why would they have done it that way? What is the positive intent? And it was really pretty transformational for the way I thought about life. That's awesome. I think, you know, I've always leaned on the positive side of things. The negative thoughts are a lot more internal than they are what's coming to me externally. And so, but I can't imagine life going like that. When my mind does shift that way, which it does from time to time, I realize it. And luckily, I'm a very cognizant person. So, when I realize that that's happening, it's just not a fun way to go through life. I love that API. And I think that ultimately is, it's just a happier way to live, let alone the success that will inevitably come as a byproduct of that. All right, you went somewhere else now I want to go into. When you recognize the negative self-talk or negative narrative or just negativity, being the cognizant guy you are, how do you overcome it or how do you shift the mindset? Yeah, so a couple of things. The biggest step is becoming cognizant of it. A lot of us can get into these patterns and not even know that we're doing it and when we're really negative. And so, the first thing is to become really aware of it. And when you do that, when I become aware of it, I then try to make myself a promise of it. For example, this happened to me probably two months ago. My workload went through the roof. We had some people that we separated with and I picked up all of the work for it. So, essentially tripled overnight. And I went through a week of just complaining about that. That I am taking on triple the work. And at the end of the week, I had an epiphany that I had done that and became aware of it. And really frustrated because I know that's not who I want to be as a human being, especially somebody who's complaining all the time or at all. And so, the first thing I did is text my wife and my business partner and said, "Hey, I realized I complained a lot this last week. I'm sorry. I was probably a real pain in the ass to be around. And I appreciate you putting up with my shit. But essentially, I need you to hold me accountable going forward to not be that person because that's not who I want to be as a human being. So, if you see that I'm talking a lot that's negative or if you see that I'm complaining a lot, you guys are around me the most and I need you to hold me accountable to do it to that. And that's been really helpful is you know, neither of them have actually called me out on that. But cognizantly, if I'm about to say something and complain around them, I know that they call me out on it. So, I just don't say it. And that's helped me a huge amount of accountability and just throwing that out there with them. Nice work, man. I love it. Yeah. This is ongoing work for me. You know, it was a lot of my life has been lived through a negative narrative. And I never even knew that was negative. I never realized what was going on in my brain, meaning like it was just the narrative of life. It was just this like negative onslaught of stuff, you know, judging you and judging myself. And it wasn't until about four or five years ago that I was made aware of the negativity. And to your point, I am cognizant of it now. And I see it as like almost like a third party observer of my own brain. It's kind of fascinating to me. Yeah, it's it's ongoing for everybody there. And I think this is human nature is our minds do go to dark places. And it's important work, I think for everybody to to focus on. And same thing same goes with trust, right? That's where my negativity typically comes into play is somebody really did screw me over. And now I don't trust people around me. And so a mentor of mine told me when I was venting to him about it, he said, you want to know the secret on how to know if you can trust someone? And I said, yeah, let me know. How can I trust someone? He's like, well, yeah, you trust them and see what happens. I'm like, Oh my gosh, it's so simple. But it's true. Ultimately, you never know if you can trust anybody until you do. So why not go into it with a positive outlook that, hey, I'm a trusted person and see how see where it goes, lean into the curiosity again. And and watch it, you don't have to trust them forever. But may as well give them a shot and try. Yeah, it's interesting you say trust. I'm I'm listening. I don't read books too much anymore, but I'm listening to the speed of trust by Stephen Covey. And it's so far so good. Yeah, there's someone in my network that like it's his thing. He loves this book and all of the teachings are like fun and fundamental foundational to his makeup. And I'm not too far in yet, but it's good. It's it's quite good. Awesome. I'll have to read that one. Yeah. All right, we're getting close to end of our time, Cody. Any parting thoughts that you'd like to share? Yes, I'm I'm really excited about this podcast and I'm really trying to grow my social social media. So if anybody listens, please come follow my page on Instagram at Cody Cappy CODY C A P P Y and look out for my new podcast to come. And also just want to take a moment to thank you, Darren, for having me on the podcast and the top floor team for reaching out and setting this up honored to be here and I really appreciate this opportunity. Awesome. We'll include your socials website, all the stuff in the notes. So anyone listening, click below. Cody, this was awesome. I appreciate your willingness to go a little deeper than the surface. And I really appreciate you sharing about a lot of the personal growth that you're going through and that you practice and also how that influenced the way you lead. That was I was really cool. I enjoyed that. Yeah, thanks, Darren. That was great. That was great. All right. Have a great day. We'll see you. Thank you.
