5 Game-Changing Insights from a Solar Expert You Can’t Afford to Miss!

Dylan Silver (00:01.314)

Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host Dylan Silver and today on the show I have a fellow Texan based out of the Austin area electrician and solar installer involved in a lot in that space, Gabe Lenson. Gabe, welcome to the show.

Gabe Lensing (00:19.585)

Great to be here.

Dylan Silver (00:21.458)

I was briefly involved in the solar space in sales, door-to-door sales. That’s a very tough job, but I have a lot of respect for the installers because before we were hopping on, we were chatting about just how crucial installation is. But also I learned a little bit more about you before hopping on here. As a master electrician, you weren’t always involved in solar. So how did you get into this space?

Gabe Lensing (00:48.747)

So kind of a funny story, we got into the space on accident. Like before we were really involved with the idea of solar, I was actually pretty adamant about the fact that like, I’m not going do it, which I’m learning more and more. Like I should just stop saying that because every time I’ve said that in business, I’ve followed up by doing the thing. But I went through and one of our fellow business networking buddies has a solar array and he had it installed by a contractor who got bought out by somebody else. And then the person that bought

the original company out, cut off their solar division. So he was calling their helpline and nothing was coming through because they just shut up the whole division. And so he came up to us and was like, can you come fix my thing? I have one micro inverter down. Like, I don’t think it’s that difficult, but I just can’t get a new one and I can’t get it installed. And I was like, yeah, like, let me check it out. And so I went and got Enphase certified that week. it took, one night stayed up from like

eight to midnight getting Enphase certified. And I was like, okay, yeah, I can do this. This should be pretty easy. And then got to take over his system and was like, man, like, I feel like there’s a missing opportunity here. We’re like, the solar companies will go install it, but they won’t maintenance it. So like you have an inverter go bad, you’re just out of luck. So why don’t we like, like we should be able to harness that market. And then as I learned more about it, I’ve been a big fan of Span anyway, for

since we started the business. was like, that’s the newest, coolest panel. I want to be involved in the new, cool stuff because I’m a big old nerd. And so I may as well be on top of that. And SPAN integrates with solar and battery backup and that whole system. And so it’s just kind of been a culmination of everything coming together to kind of direct us down that path. then with it being Super Sun Electric, we’re kind of already in that space. mean, everybody asks if we’re solar anyway. it’s been like the signs have been pointing that direction for a little while.

Dylan Silver (02:44.398)

I want ask you about building a business as an electrician in general. So before you got involved with solar, were you working for yourself? you alongside someone? How did Super Sun Electrical come about? What was it like building a business?

Gabe Lensing (03:01.407)

Yeah, so I say I got to work for other contractors for about seven years. So that’s what you have to do if you want to master for your own company. There’s different ways to do it. You can hire a master electrician if you want to just start an electrical company, but you need a master on file. I’m egotistical and I wanted to be the master on file and be like, look, if I’m the master, they can’t leave me for somebody else. Right. Like I’m not going to leave myself. And so I was like, that’s the

the most secure way to start your own company. It takes a little bit longer, but it’s the most secure. so, and for the seven years, I got my master’s last September, September 13th, and I went and put in, I gave a six month notice at the company that I was at because I was a manager at time. I was like, I want to respect the owners for like taking this bet on me and like, make sure that they’re still sustainable even after I leave. build that company up. That lasted about two weeks and then they let me go to go chase my dream.

And so me and my wife started the company and how we got the name Super Sun Electric is in high school, I wrestled for about 14, 15 years. So I wrestled before I got into school. And my favorite move was a Superman. So you just kind of dive across and look like Superman. You catch their head and it’s a cheap tilt, but it gets points and it works. And then my wife’s nickname, we go to Sherwood Forest Fair, which is a local Renaissance fair. And her nickname out there is Sunshine.

And so we went through and we’re trying to figure out like, what’s the best name for our company. And we went through all of the electrical puns of like, then they were all taken because there’s plenty of electrical contractors out there and we’re late to the game on that aspect. And so all of the good puns were taken. like, man, we should figure out a different name. And then we just kind of meshed Superman and sunshine together and came up with super sun. And we’re like, you know what? That works really good. Let’s do it. And then we had no intention of entering the solar space.

I kind of thought about doing batteries here and there, because I was like, I’ve heard they’re margins on it. There’s pretty good revenue on it. May as well play with that. But otherwise, I don’t really know. Let’s play with it if we can. But I don’t know if we’re actually going to get into that space. And then we just kind of jumped into the market and said, look, I’m an electrician. Tell me what you need. And we saw what worked. And we’d get some ceiling fan calls and some lighting calls and troubleshooting calls and stuff like that.

Gabe Lensing (05:21.729)

And then we really started finding our stride with EV chargers. We’re like, OK, a lot of people need EV chargers. I know how to do them at a really high level. I do it really well. The margins are great. May as well just keep rolling with that. And as we did that, that brought us into, OK, we should really do batteries to be able to charge your car and your battery at the same time. And in a power audit, you’re good. And then as we played with that, we were like, well, we should have something to help extend that life. Let’s play with the span panel, too, and really start bringing that in.

And now your battery lasts 40 % longer. You have full visibility of everything. It works really well. And then we’re like, now we may as well have something to power the power wall and power that battery. So let’s put solar in there. The span panel integrates with that. And everything works great. And they’re coming out with some really cool stuff that I don’t know that I’m allowed to talk about, so I’m just going to avoid talking about it right now. But they’re coming out with some really cool stuff that’s going to make the install faster, cleaner, super cool.

Dylan Silver (06:12.046)

Great stuff,

Gabe Lensing (06:18.721)

And I’m really, really excited about it. It’s supposed to come out sometime in 26 from what they said.

Dylan Silver (06:22.062)

So in span, are they a manufacturer? I’m not familiar with. they a manufacturer within the solar energy space? And do they have a specific niche? Is it batteries?

Gabe Lensing (06:32.129)

So SPAN is actually like the newest, greatest electrical panel. So they are kind of, they’re not like they’re manufactured, they’re an electrical panel manufacturer, but that’s not for specifically solar or battery. They just meld well with them. But what they do is give you the full capabilities of your energy management system. So a lot of the times when you’re adding an EV charger, you have the new heat pumps and all of the other electrification that’s happening, you have to upgrade your service from a

200 to like a 400 or 400 or 600 with the span panel, you don’t because it has actual energy management in there. So it’ll load shed your EV charger for five minutes while your oven’s running and then it’ll kick it back off and like it actually manages your load. And so it’s just the newest, greatest sequence of everything. So rather than like the standard hundred year old panel, which has your breakers in it and looks the exact same as what it did 90 years ago with a little bit more space for me to wire stuff up.

Like that’s been the only changes like they’ve kind of added some more spaces for me to wire things up. And in other cases, they’ve made it more craft, but like the technology and the panel hasn’t really changed that much in the last hundred years. Span completely revolutionized that.

Dylan Silver (07:41.324)

I want to pivot, Gabe, and ask you about building a business as an electrician, but also in the solar space. You hit on something at the top of the show talking about, I didn’t know that I was going to be in the solar space, but here we are. As someone who’s been in the solar space on the sales side, and I mentioned just how important electricians are in this space, I’m curious, are there…

any electricians or are there is this a thing that exists right now I would imagine it is where there’s electricians who are also running sales organizations and they do everything in-house themselves so that they can really provide the quickest fastest and best service while also making more money

Gabe Lensing (08:28.283)

so there are, but it’s, it’s few and far between like most of them aren’t because like some of them, like they’ve got a really good sales guy who can, you know, sell ice to an Eskimo, but like they don’t have the installers that can back that level of sales skill. And so like, they don’t take the time to actually effectively train their guys. And so it’s just one of those that like, rather than investing the time to training these, they just hire somebody outside of it they make a little bit less money, but they don’t have to make the upward investment, which I’m a very big advocate of like, I don’t want to sub anything out.

And we’re going to start with subbing our solar out while we don’t have a robust team, but we’re going to start building that up. Like if we get proof of concept of like, we can sell this and we’re making money and it’s a $50,000 array. Like, why would I sub that out and only make eight when I could have the $50,000 in top line and do it at a 60 % gross margin and like really keep the large amount of that money and then have a more robust team where I have full control over quality. And so it’s just one of those that I think.

A lot of electricians are willing to sacrifice that quality and the culture and that relationship that they’ve built with their customers. And I’m just not, I really don’t want to. I want to have all of that harnessed inside of my own ecosystem. And then I have the best trained technicians and have the best trained customers and employees and everybody to where it’s all nice ecosystem where my customers understand I have full transparency. I know about a problem before my customer knows about a problem.

because most of the time on that, you can get notifications when something is wrong with their system. And so rather than waiting for them to tell me about it, I call them and like, hey, by the way, your system has a problem. I’ve got a technician on the way to get that solved. And that’s the world that I want to build, where the customer service is so ridiculous that they don’t know what to do with it.

Dylan Silver (10:16.302)

And so you’re already, it sounds like, correct me if I’m wrong, you’re already involved in the sales side currently. That’s tremendous. And one of the things that I want to highlight, having done this myself, is it is complicated for the average person to understand kilowatt hours and understand how many panels you need to have on a roof, the grade of the panels, which way it’s facing. And when I was learning this,

And I hate to say this, because I am a sales guy at heart, and I have a lot of respect for guys who make a living in the sales space. And I think even with AI and all the advancements, people are still going to want to buy from people. But I remember thinking, like, this is so complicated, where I do feel like I should be an electrician. And I’m sure that there will be solar guys who will disagree with me vehemently on this. But I was thinking, like, I really want to know for a fact.

that this home that they just moved into, which currently doesn’t have any appliances in it, that I’m providing them enough, you know, power effectively, because they’re gonna get more appliances. So I can’t just go off of last month’s bill. And also too, I know what I’ve been told and what I’ve been trained on, but I wish I knew more. So as someone who’s an electrician going in and talking to homeowners, you’re armed with so much more information.

coming from such a place of expertise, what are those conversations like? And do you kind of have the same sentiment where it’s like, hey, this is actually a pretty high level complex issue, like you’re powering a home, converting solar energy. This is not, you know, a conversation that just anyone can handle.

Gabe Lensing (12:00.609)

Yeah, so I actually usually don’t even talk about the kilowatt hours and everything else like that because it’s so high level that unless you’re an electrical engineer, you’re probably not understanding it. And if you are an electrical engineer, I don’t need to tell you about it. it’s one of those that it’s a pointless conversation because 95 % of people aren’t going to understand it. So I usually equate it to a bowl of water. And that’s where I go with you have this bowl of water when I’m talking about service upgrades when I’m putting in an EV charger and I’m like,

You’ve got a bowl of water, it’s got two gallons of water in there and you’ve got 125 amp service and you want to take half of that water to charge your car. But you’re already using two thirds of that water to power your house. So you can’t do that. And I think that people can visualize that better because we know what a bowl of water looks like. But when I tell you, hey, you’ve got 125 amps, don’t mess your electrician. You don’t know what that is. You don’t know what that looks like and it doesn’t mean anything.

Dylan Silver (12:55.438)

Yeah.

Gabe Lensing (12:57.727)

And so it works the same way with kilowatt hours. People just don’t understand what that means. And so actually giving them a visual representation of this is what it is. This is how much it pulls. And your HVAC pulls this much. actually being able to break that down and make it more simple. And you’ve got this gallon of water. And that’s what you use on a daily basis. And we want to give you two gallons of water to power your whole house so that as you add in your EV charger and as you add in your

mini split and your air fryer, you actually have the ability to grow into that system. And then giving them battery to back it up.

Dylan Silver (13:35.288)

What I want to point out, just hearing you talk about it, you mentioned a bowl of water. One of the things that high level communicators and anybody who’s good at sales will tell you sales is just communication and it’s making a friend and it’s helping them see value in what it is that you’re doing. I would imagine one of the reasons why some master electricians may not want to get into the sales portion of it is because that’s a different skill set. It’s a different skill set to talk to someone about the value in

solar for their home versus installation. It’s two totally different things. And sure, if you’re you’re, you know, fixing electrical issues at someone’s home, that there may be some communication involved there. But as an electrician, I’m sure you see this most people are calling an electrician when there’s already kind of a major issue. You’re not typically calling an electrician when it’s like, yeah, well, you know, this is something that’s like, maybe three months from now, we may need something. It’s typically like, no, we lost power in this area of the house, we

We need a lot of nutrition out here. so, you know, I think the solar thing is a different game that you’re playing. And I wanted to get a little bit granular, Gabe, and ask you, because I was in the solar space, so I had familiarity with this. When people had a budget in mind, right, and they’re saying, well, you know, that’s a lot for a solar bill, right? And they’re saying, well, maybe I should do a little bit less and it’ll cover like, let’s call it 80 % versus

100%. What’s your perspective on that? Is it worth it to get more panels and maybe it’s a higher monthly and you get 100 % coverage or should you say, well, it’ll be 50 or 80 % or whatever the percentage is and that they’ll just pay the rest through their local utility company?

Gabe Lensing (15:22.379)

Yeah, so I’m a firm believer, like if you’re not going to get a hundred and realistically like 125%, like if you’re not going to max that out, it’s not even worth buying solar. Cause like the biggest complaint that I’ve heard is, yeah, I bought solar five years ago and now I’ve got a utility bill and a solar bill. like, adding them up costed more than what my utility bill did. And so like, you’re not going to offset it. And then the utility bill, and I’m sure you know, like it goes up like three to 5%, I think every year. And so I

Now compared to 10 years from now, you’re going to pay roughly 30 % more if we don’t compound it, right? So like 30 to 33 % more on your bill. So like your $100 bill now is going to cost you $150 in 10 years, whereas your solar is going to cost you $250 and you’re to have it half paid off in 10 years. So why not just max that out? Have a little bit bigger bill, get the full battery system, but you own your electrical at that point. Like you are your own power grid, like max it all out.

Dylan Silver (16:19.278)

Yeah.

Gabe Lensing (16:19.669)

And like, maybe that’s just me personally, and I’m a big fan of like, go all in, max it out. Like, if you’re going to do something, just do it. But it’s one of those that like, I feel like there’s so many solar companies that aren’t electricians and don’t understand, like, this is where this is going to evolve to. That they’re just like, I just want to get the sale and I don’t care if it’s like the best solution for the customer. I just want to sell it. And so like, I want my, you know, $5,000 commission on this $40,000 array, rather than like, okay, let’s go for broke here and like,

actually give them what they need and either I’m going to get the sale and they’re going to get what they need or I’m not, but they’re not going to get what they don’t need. And I feel like there’s so many people who are in the middle of that where like they don’t get either one of them. They’re like, yeah, you got solar, but you really get what you need. And I didn’t even sell you batteries. like I had several solar guys come out even before I was like running my own company. And I was like, can we get batteries? Like I asked them, like I was willing to pay them the money to get batteries and like, you don’t need the batteries. That just makes the bill really expensive.

Dylan Silver (17:03.886)

So many people. Yeah.

Gabe Lensing (17:18.815)

And now that I’ve gotten more and more into this space, was like, first of all, on a business aspect, that’s just dumb. You just lost out on $40,000 of revenue. And second of all, you’re proposing a worse solution to your customer because you don’t know how to sell it you don’t feel comfortable selling it. And so rather than giving them what they truly need, you’re just half-assing it to make it work for you so that you can get the commission that you wanted. it’s just, yeah, I’ve heard so many complaints that I’m

Dylan Silver (17:43.309)

Yeah.

Gabe Lensing (17:47.625)

One of the things that we market to is like, hey, let’s complete your solar install. Let’s actually get you batteries. Let’s actually get you a span panel. Like, let’s get you this full system rather than the like one third or halfway system that you have right now.

Dylan Silver (18:00.802)

I can totally relate to this. have a question which I’m gonna save for a minute here, but when I think about this difficulty, one of the things that I think about, I came from the automotive industry before I got into real estate, I’m an agent and a wholesaler now, but in automotive, one of the things that people would sometimes struggle with would be, well, how do you justify a used vehicle versus getting a new vehicle? And where’s the value in the used vehicle? Well, the value in the used vehicle,

is pretty much the depreciation has been taken out of it. There’s risk in that though as well. And then some people say, well, yeah, but the new vehicles are like three times more expensive. Well, what’s more important to them? Is it more important to them to have a hassle free experience where they’re going to be paying more for it? They’re not going to have to worry about anything going wrong for three years in the powertrain for five to seven years. And yeah, they’re going to be paying twice as much, but also they’re not going to have to worry about any maintenance, right? Versus they’re getting something

That is, you know, a lot of road miles and things can start going out and there’s zero coverage right away. So what’s important to them? And what I found is the better that I got at communicating value and just more upfront that I was with it and with zero fear, the more that people would kind of self filter, you’d have some people who would tell me, you know what, I don’t I’m willing to take the risk. If it breaks, it breaks. I’ll take the used vehicle. And then you had some people were like, I don’t want to deal with that at all. It is really expensive.

but I’m gonna go with the new vehicle. And so, giving them that description, like, hey, battery, this is gonna do boom, boom, boom, this is why you could benefit from this, you know, it may add, it will add, but this is the benefit from it, and then let them decide.

I do want to pivot here, Gabe, and ask you just about scaling a business in general in the solar space. You’re an installer, you’re doing the sales yourself, you mentioned you’re subbing out for now, but also once you have proof of concept, looking at expanding. Are there businesses, you don’t have to name names, but other businesses that are doing this now, and how are you looking at the scaling process? Is there kind of like a…

Dylan Silver (20:17.088)

a guide that you have to go off of in this space or are you kind of a maverick in the solar and installation realm?

Gabe Lensing (20:25.461)

Yeah, since we just got into solar, like, I mean, we’re still in talks with the guy to get it sub down. So we’re still looking at selling it. Like, we know what we want to do. We’re still building the offer and making it happen. So I’m not saying by any means I know how to scale this, but like the vision that I have is like, when I start to scale this, after I get proof of concept, really you can get from what I’ve seen four to five guys to build an array in a pretty decent amount of time. It might take two or three days, but you can get four or five guys up there to do it properly. So you can have your one residential wireman, a journeyman, and then

three apprentices and like teach them how to do it. Because that’s the other part of it is like, the reason that these companies are subbing it out is because they don’t know how to train their guys and like they don’t know how to build them up. And so I’m a big component in training, like we have a weekly training meeting over technical, and then we have a weekly training meeting over sales. So every Monday, we start with sales every Friday, we start with technical, because they can absorb the technical throughout the weekend. And then it re installs that like conviction in them on Mondays.

to where they can go out and sell better. And I can see where I didn’t have an effective meeting and my sales are down a little bit. But really scaling it is just finding the right system. And then I’m a big Alex Ramosi fan of imperfect action. So even if it’s not the right choice right now, you do the best you can with the information you have. And then as you learn more, you pivot, make better structures, you build that better system. But the only way you can learn that is really starting.

Like me and my wife studied for a year on how to do business right and how to do it all. And then we got in there and like, it’s a totally different realm after you’re like in the game and are actually playing it. And like it, it’s just, it’s harder and it’s different. like theory’s fun, but reality is real. so like totally different. And we, when we started, we were just like your general service electrician. And I was pretty cheap when I started and I was like, okay, cool. Like that’s just like.

Dylan Silver (22:06.744)

totally different.

Gabe Lensing (22:17.375)

I don’t need to be as expensive as the big guys because I’m just operating out of my living room. So it doesn’t matter. And then I realized like, man, that’s stupid. Like if they can sell it for that much, so can I. So there’s just like, I should just make twice as much money as what they do. Like I should just have a higher profit margin. Like I shouldn’t sell it for any cheaper. And that’s what we started doing. And now we’re actually making money to where we can really grow and we can reinvest in the team. And that’s what actually lets you scale versus exactly.

Dylan Silver (22:41.378)

and leading into service, right? You you mentioned being able to be continuity for them versus many cases like a one-off situation. We are coming up on time here, Gabe. Where can folks go if they want to learn more about your business, to reach out to you, to get a hold of you? Where can folks go?

Gabe Lensing (23:03.019)

So we’re on pretty much all the social medias. I mean, my wife runs all of it, pretty much any of the social media search SuperSound Electric. Or you can go on our website. We’ve got a bunch of resources on there. We’ve got a full dictionary of the A to Zs of electrical work. So we define all of the terms that my technicians talk about, what you need to know on electrical. Like I said, we really try to educate. We’ve got several different resources on there for Tesla Powerwalls, span panels.

just like that information, EV chargers and benefits of the wall connector versus an EMA 1450. that’d be the best place to do it. I’m on LinkedIn and I’m trying to grow my connection. So look me up and I’d love to connect and just start building that.

Dylan Silver (23:43.79)

Gabe, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. Thanks for coming on the show here today. Congrats on your success and to your continued success. Thanks for coming on, Gabe.

Gabe Lensing (23:55.105)

Thank you.