Insights from Industry Leader Carl Moose

Dylan Silver (00:00.748)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Dylan Silver. And today on the show I have Carl Moose, former commercial banker, commercial real estate investor, renewable energy executive, author, speaker, father of three, member of Napoleon Hill Foundation and creator of the Energized Real Estate Model. Carl, welcome to the show.

Carl (00:21.637)
Dylan, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Dylan Silver (00:24.042)
Absolutely. Pleasure having you on. Let’s start at the top. I like to hear about my folks origin story guests on the show. How did you get into the real estate space?

Carl (00:35.513)
Yeah, you know, it’s an interesting story. I, I went to college because I played hockey and I guess I was a pretty good hockey player. So I got a degree in geology, which I never made a nickel as a, as a geologist. and I went right into sales. I started in my sales career with a company out of new England, the Boston, north of Boston and New Hampshire, did pretty well. And then, I moved to Chicago because I, I, I love Chicago. My, parents are from Chicago.

And I got into banking. I worked with one of the big banks back, it was called ABN Amro, Dutch Bank. And I started doing real estate financing, right? And then long story short, I started buying buildings. So my clients kept saying, you’re really good at what you do. You know how to analyze a building. know how to put a deal together. Why don’t you buy any buildings? And at the time I only owned a condo.

So I started buying buildings. So we bought, I put a group of investors together. We bought about 22 buildings. And then I invested in a wind energy company, a renewable energy company. And that’s how I got into renewable. And here we are 20 years later, I’m now running a company with a partner of mine called Greenlight Energy. And we do a commercial, residential, and community solar. So that’s kind of the long and short of it.

Dylan Silver (02:01.346)
Let’s talk about the solar space a bit here. So I think solar is interesting, specifically being in Texas. Before I got into real estate, I was in car sales. I’d also done door to door a little bit, specifically here in Texas. As you know, it’s a huge deal because of how much sun we have. But I’m curious how the northern states are taking advantage of solar, specifically when you’ve got long winters. What’s solar like up there?

Carl (02:28.143)
You know, it’s so interesting, Dylan, you say that. By the way, you’re probably a really good salesman because you know what? I’ll tell you what, my son, I told him you should start selling cars because…

Selling cars and door knocking, going door to door is a great way to develop your sales skills because you get more no’s than everybody else. I tell my sales staff, every no, you’re one no closer to a yes. So you want to get those no’s. You want people to say no to you because you’re one step closer to a yes. And most people don’t get that. anyway.

Dylan Silver (03:00.078)
You’re not wrong.

Carl (03:01.537)
It’s interesting you say that because there’s a couple components that go into what makes a good environment for solar. One obviously is the sun, right? You need sunshine. But there’s some other factors that a lot of people don’t realize. One is the politics, right? I’m not talking about Democrat and Republican. I’m talking about whether your state is a renewable energy friendly state. And then the other is the utility company, right? So those are the three things. The solar resource.

the political environment for renewables and your utility. So it just so happens, Illinois, which is where we are in Chicago, is one of the best states for solar because we have really good, our governor is very renewable friendly.

Our utility companies, there’s only two in Illinois, are very solar friendly. And believe it or not, in this area of the country, from New York basically to San Francisco, we get a pretty good solar resource. Because remember, a lot of people don’t realize this. It’s the orientation of the earth and what season you’re in, right? So in Illinois, we have eight good months. We call them high production months, right?

And we have four low production months, November, December, January, February. And it’s because of the tilt of the earth and the distance from the sun, because of the earth’s rotation around the sun, that predicts that, right? So, and the other thing is, have you ever left your cell phone on your dashboard or by the window? It overheats, right? Right. Well, the same thing happens in Florida. You know, you mentioned Florida. If you’ve ever been to Florida in July,

Dylan Silver (04:30.584)
Yeah, that’s a good way to break your phone, yeah.

Carl (04:41.573)
at noon, there’s nobody on the beach because you’re going to get burned. You’re going to get burnt to a crisp, right? Well, the same thing happens with solar panels. So it’s kind of counterintuitive. When the sun is at closest to the earth and producing the most energy, you actually overheat the solar panels, right? So we don’t have that problem in that longitudinal line across the country. So Illinois is actually one of the best states for solar.

Dylan Silver (04:45.858)
roasted.

Dylan Silver (05:10.616)
we maxed out Carl our efficiency of solar panels or is there potentially down the line a way for them to get more efficient than they already are?

Carl (05:17.701)
You know what Dylan, another great question. That’s a really great question. So here’s how I answer that.

Every satellite that’s in space is powered by solar. So what’s driving the solar panel technology is actually satellite technology. Because when you put anything up in space, don’t care, you take a pen or the glasses you’re wearing and you send them up in space, it’s gonna cost you $10 million. Well, when it goes up there, it’s gotta stay up there for a couple of decades and there’s nobody up there servicing it. There’s nobody up there, it’s not plugged into anything.

And every satellite in orbit is powered by solar panels, right? So that satellite technology is actually trickling down to the rooftop. So the panels we’re installing today are panels and technology they were putting up on satellites 10 years ago, right? So we’re actually using space age technology for satellites today. So that’s a really good question. Now, there are limits to solar panels. A solar panel is very basic. As a matter of fact, your phone is more sophisticated.

There’s solar panel. It’s basically two pieces of glass with alternating layers of in essence sand

Between them right so there’s nothing there’s nothing high tech About the panel design what’s high tech is the material they’re using right? What what type of sand are they using and by the way the egyptians use solar panels In one form or the other to produce a current so this technology has been around Yeah, this technology has been around for a very long time. So to answer your question What’s that? Well

Dylan Silver (06:47.17)
Really?

Dylan Silver (06:51.342)
Can we dive into that a little bit? Can we dive into that a little bit?

Carl (06:57.507)
I mean, there’s some controversy about whether you believe that or not. believe it. They used to take slate and put sand and they would create a current from one end to the other to create a heat cell. So it would one end was colder than the other end, right? And this technology is, it’s not your cell phone is way more advanced than,

Dylan Silver (07:09.089)
Wow.

Dylan Silver (07:17.902)
color panels.

Carl (07:18.209)
solar panels, right? But my point is, and by the way that’s excellent question, my point is it’s all satellite technology driven and we’re benefiting from that on our rooftops.

Dylan Silver (07:30.414)
Pivoting a bit here, Carl, and this is a hypothetical, no one has a perfect answer for this, and of course, we can’t project the future. But I worked for Toyota very briefly when I was selling cars, and they have or had a car with a rooftop solar panel. Of course, that’s not gonna power the car. And to be frank, my semi-professional, semi-informed opinion was it wasn’t doing a whole lot of a lot. But if we move and keep an eye out to the future, let’s talk…

five, ten years from now, is there a possibility that we could see rooftop solar panel cars? Is that even a thing that’s discussed or is that kind of pie in the sky?

Carl (08:08.037)
So again, very interesting conversation. We live in a Newtonian, Newton, Isaac Newton, right, 600 years ago. We live in a Newtonian universe, right, our universe.

Dylan Silver (08:16.856)
Yeah.

Carl (08:21.589)
is predicated on Newtonian physics, right? And one of his, you he had three laws, right? One of them was the law of thermodynamics, which is governed by energy, right? You cannot create it or destroy it. In our universe, now I’m not saying 700 years from now, there may be another, you our universe may look different, which it probably will. But what I’m talking about is our universe is governed by Newtonian law, by the Newtonian physics. And one of those laws is the law of

Thermodynamics which talks about energy you cannot create it in straight. So here’s here’s the point

There is a limit to how much energy you can harvest from the sun with solar panels. And it’s physical limit. It’s simply about the physical limits of a solar panel. The sun has an unlimited source of energy. There is no shortage of energy. We get hit every day, all day, even at night, the other side of earth is getting hit with energy. In one hour, in the time, Dylan, that we do this podcast, the earth…

will be hit with enough solar energy, enough solar radiation to power 100 % of all human consumption.

And there’s no lack of energy, right? The kicker is how do you capture it and how do you convert it to a useful form of energy, right? And electricity is the easiest way. So there are limits to solar panels. Absolutely. And the material scientists are working on that and they’ve, we’re pretty close, right? There’s still some, there’s no quantum leap, right? We made a quantum leap back in the 50s. Kind of think of the analogy of airplanes, right? So we had piston.

Carl (10:03.175)
propeller airplanes, right? It wasn’t until the 40s where we went to jet engines. That was a quantum leap, right? We had piston engines.

with propellers and we went to jet engines, right? That was a quantum leap. The last quantum leap in solar technology was back in the 60s and 70s, late 60s, early 70s. And there’s not another quantum leap coming. We pretty much have gone as far as we can go, just like with jet engines, right? Can they get more efficient? Absolutely. Can they get less expensive? 100%. But there’s not gonna be another quantum leap in jet engines, right? There’s not gonna be another quantum leap as far as solar panels go.

Dylan Silver (10:42.72)
Are there alternative sources of energy that are not publicly discussed? I hear lot about wind. I’m in Texas, so we got open fields and we got a lot of sun. So wind and solar. I know that there’s, you know, I guess water from waterfalls and I’m not super well versed on that, but we don’t see a lot of that in Texas. Are those the big three or the big two and are there others?

Carl (11:08.953)
Whoa.

Dylan, you must have done your homework because these are really good questions. So think of it this way. All of the energy that we use, including the energy for you and I to talk, for you and I to do this podcast, whatever, is derived from the sun. So the sun is the center of our solar system. All energy is derived from the sun, including wind. Wind is not derived from the rotation of the earth. It’s derived from the heating and cooling of the oceans. So the oceans heat, and that’s what creates the current.

So even wind energy is solar energy, right? Hydrocarbons. 600 million years ago, plants and animals grew, right? The plants grew. They got their energy from the same sun that you and I get our energy from. It’s the same sun. It hasn’t, it’s not a new model. It’s been there for four and a half billion years.

And by the way, it’s never taken a day off. It hasn’t ever taken an hour off, right? It hasn’t taken a nanosecond off, right? It’s been shining for over four and a half billion years. And we got about another four and a half billion years to go, right? So all energy, including hydrocarbons. So 600 million years ago, plants got their energy from the sun through photosynthesis. They grew. The animals ate them.

Dylan Silver (12:03.512)
Never.

Carl (12:25.849)
They all died. They became hydrocarbons, coal, natural gas, oil. Now we dig that up and we harvest that kinetic energy, right? We tap into that kinetic energy. We burn it to create heat, to create steam, to turn a generator that’s attached to a turbine that’s attached to magnets that create a current. And that’s what we use for energy, right? So it’s all, to your question, there’s only one source.

The source is the Sun. It’s the Sun, right? So all energy is derived from the Sun. So how do we tap into that? Well, this is how we tap into it. You put solar panels on your home or your building and you tap into it.

Dylan Silver (12:56.43)
the sun.

Dylan Silver (13:11.416)
Simple enough. It’s shocking to hear the simplification of it. As someone who’s on the outside looking in, it seems like almost overwhelming. And I think a lot of people probably feel the same way. Like, how much money am I gonna really save?

But then in Texas, I can say specifically, if you could have locked in your rates by getting solar panels a handful of years ago, you probably would have done it. When’s the next best time to do it? Right now. I’m a real estate guy. You’re a real estate guy. When’s the best time to buy a home? Five years ago. When’s the next best time? Right now.

Carl (13:41.581)
You know, it’s so great that you say that because I tell people all the time It was the best time to plant a tree or buy real estate right now. You know if you did it 20 years ago You’d be retired or you’d have a big tree, right? But the best time to buy real estate is right now and here’s the kicker a lot of people overcomplicate it It’s very simple right and I’m a real estate guy now We’re buying buildings and putting solar up there because that creates four or five additional revenue streams

To that and why so on top of the rental income because commercial real estate, which I’m into is the value is the N.O.I. right net operating income your gross income minus your expenses. So how can you boast or bolster that or increase that and why you could do things like charge for parking. can add amenities. You can put vending machines whatever you can also produce your own energy. So instead of paying the power company the utility company produce

own energy. So if you own a home or a building, you have a roof. Now here’s the kicker and Dylan I know you’ll understand this. The biggest system and the biggest liability in any piece of real estate, I don’t care if it’s a home or a big convention center, it doesn’t matter, is your roof. And it’s the thing that people think about the least. It’s out of sight, out of mind. You don’t think about your roof. It’s a liability. Robert Kiyosaki in his book, Rich Dad Poor Dad,

A liability is something that costs you money, an asset is something that puts money in your pocket, period, end of story, right? Your roof, unless you’re advertising on your roof, unless you’re the United Center here in Chicago or the Rosemont Horizon or somebody’s paying you United Airlines or American Airlines is paying you a lot of money for your roof space, your roof is a liability. So how do you take that liability and turn it into an asset?

Dylan Silver (15:31.064)
solar panels.

Carl (15:31.471)
Question number one, how do you take one of your biggest variable expenses, your electric bill, and fix it, right? That’s another axiom. And I don’t care what business you’re in. If you can take one of your variable expenses and fix it, that’s business 101. Business 101, take a variable expense and fix it. Then you can predict your profits, right? And the third thing is,

using federal state utility money. number one, assets or liabilities become assets. Number two, variable expenses become fixed. Number three, you’re using federal state utility money to pay for it. Now I didn’t say solar and any of that, right? It’s not about solar. It’s about, it’s about liabilities become assets, variable expenses becoming fixed and using federal state utility money. Any real estate investor, whether it’s a single family home or you got a, or your FedEx, which by the way, we’re starting to buy FedEx billings. FedEx that has a

million square feet, this makes sense because again, you’re taking a liability, you’re turning in your asset, you’re taking a variable expense, you’re fixing it, and you’re using state and federal and utility money to do it.

Dylan Silver (16:35.694)
Carl, pivoting to question about Texas here specifically, I look at the solar panel market, the folks who are doing this, and I see a lot of it everywhere right now. Is Texas maxed out as far as solar? Is there a kind of a limited number of what else we could be doing?

Carl (16:54.735)
So here’s the problem with Texas. And by the way, I love Texas just for the record. I love Texas. It’s one of my favorite states. The problem is they have so much they have so much hydrocarbons. They have so much oil there. It’s a very energy rich state. So to go solar in a state like that doesn’t necessarily make sense. Number one. Number two is.

The powers to be the government agencies and the utility companies don’t want you to go solar because they want you to stay on hydrocarbons, right? Oil and gas. it makes sense. Listen, the Caribbean, right? So I’m a big fan of the Caribbean. love the Caribbean. there’s so many good places, Aruba, the Cayman Islands. mean, there’s so many. the Caymans are great. The Virgin Islands are phenomenal, British or American. I mean.

Dylan Silver (17:32.354)
Me too. Where do you like to go?

Dylan Silver (17:39.118)
I haven’t been in the Cayman Islands or Aruba.

Dylan Silver (17:44.194)
You don’t need a passport to go to the Virgin Islands, right? You just go, you have your driver’s license, you can go, right?

Carl (17:47.203)
Well, US Virgin Islands, there’s also the British, you need it to go to the British Virgin Islands. There’s two, yeah, the US Virgin Islands you don’t need to. Puerto Rico you don’t. it’s gorgeous. I mean, it’s beautiful, right? And by the way, it’s a lot closer than Fiji or Hawaii, right? It’s like, I can be there in about four hours.

Dylan Silver (17:51.714)
British, yeah.

How is it over there? I’ve never been over there.

Dylan Silver (18:03.564)
Yeah. I love traveling. have a passport that I got for the first time two years ago. I went to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, learned Spanish. I’ve been back there a handful of times now. And as you know, Carl, going to these places changes your whole way of thinking.

Carl (18:21.839)
Well, know, people don’t realize it. There’s 40 countries down there. The Caribbean is made up of 40 different countries. And, you know, it’s so funny, I used to go there to speak to a renewable energy conference. I hadn’t been in a few years. But you can literally walk up to the president or the governor’s house, knock on the door, and meet the top guy in the country, the president of the country. And they’ll welcome you in. They’ll have tea with you. I mean, it’s amazing. I networked with so many heads of state. I mean, they are literally heads of state.

Dylan Silver (18:26.648)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (18:40.973)
What?

Carl (18:51.843)
the top guy in the country. mean, and they’re phenomenal people, phenomenal people. You have to go. mean, if you, and any of your listeners, if you haven’t been to the Caribbean, go to the Caribbean. The Caribbean is phenomenal. The people are amazing. But you want to hear, here’s the funny, you want to hear something funny? The two biggest challenges. If you sit down with the president of a country and you ask them, what are your two biggest challenges? You know they’re going to tell you?

Dylan Silver (18:57.294)
I have to go.

Carl (19:17.573)
fresh water, fresh water and energy. Here’s the funny thing about it. They are closer to the equator than we are, which is the equator is the closest point on earth to the sun. It gets hit with more solar energy. So they have tons of energy and they’re surrounded by water. But the two biggest problems are fresh water and energy. And here’s why.

Dylan Silver (19:17.9)
Finance. Okay.

energy. Yeah, it’s crazy.

Dylan Silver (19:27.895)
Yeah.

Carl (19:47.171)
To desalinate water, to take the salt out of salt water, sea water, and make it palatable, potable, it takes energy. You have to break those bonds, You have to, those molecular bonds. So it takes energy to do that. And the problem with their energy is they’re dependent on diesel fuel.

Dylan Silver (19:50.988)
Yeah.

Carl (20:06.349)
So they use diesel fuel to create energy. And the problem there is the people that control the utilities don’t want solar energy. Because if you can create your own energy, you’re not going to be paying the utility company. So the people that are collecting the money don’t want solar energy. I went down there on multiple projects to set up solar farms and wind farms. I got all the way to the end zone.

and I couldn’t get it over the finish line because the power companies would not give me a permit to produce my own power because it, no, no, no.

Dylan Silver (20:43.918)
How do people partner with those power companies? There’s gotta be a way. You can.

Carl (20:49.017)
These are big companies. They don’t want you to partner with them. They don’t want you producing your own power. They want you dependent on their power. And they literally, I could think of about 10 projects that we couldn’t get permits for because the power company did not want us to take their customers off the grid.

Dylan Silver (21:06.904)
The countries themselves are then beholden to the power companies.

Carl (21:10.659)
Well, of course they are. The people that get elected are puppets of the power companies. Yeah.

Dylan Silver (21:18.606)
It checks out very, that really makes a lot of sense. I put things into perspective. Because as I’m thinking about, like you talked about the drinking water, we take this so for granted to a degree which is almost as if you’re an American, you’ve never lived in the United States, you cannot appreciate this because you’ll go to any of these countries and you cannot drink the water. You’ll get sick, right? You’ll have an infection because their water is not drinkable, right?

And so we will just turn on the faucet and we’ll have drinking water wherever we go in this country. And we’ll talk about things like fluoride in the water or we have like hard water here in Texas. You can still drink the water. And so in these other countries, that’s not happening at all. And it makes an enormous, enormous, almost incomprehensible difference in the quality of your life.

Carl (22:07.453)
It’s so funny. We are so spoiled. And listen, I am an American born and bred. My great-great-great-grandfather came over here from Ireland. I’m fourth generation American and I love this country. However, we are so spoiled and you don’t realize it. You don’t realize it until you go to somewhere. I was just in Cozumel for a couple of weeks with my friend. Mexico, yeah. They give you when you go to the hotel and I’m talking about

Dylan Silver (22:20.588)
world.

Dylan Silver (22:27.182)
Is that Mexico? Yeah.

Carl (22:33.7)
Four-star five-star hotels or one-star hotels They give you bottles of water because they tell you do not drink the water I don’t care if you’re in a five-star hotel or a two-star hotel because to your point, but here’s the kicker. How do you? Not all water is potable. It’s not drinkable So it takes energy to clean or filter the water to recycle the water to desalinate the water It takes energy right and so these countries in the Caribbean

It’s such a dichotomy or a, I’m trying to think of the right word, but they’re surrounded by water and they’re closest to the sun. So they have tons of energy and they got tons of water, but they don’t have clean water. It’s a major problem. What was the James Bond movie? There was a James Bond movie not too long ago that was about some guy capturing all the water or he had, you he quartered all the market for the water. You remember that?

Dylan Silver (23:09.976)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (23:31.598)
I stopped watching after Casino Royale. They made the best Bond movie of all time and then I said this is it for them.

Carl (23:36.623)
There was one, I don’t think it was the last Bond movie, but it might’ve been two Bond movies ago. And the villain in the movie was a guy that was, he, cornered the market on water, right? And he, was in control of all the water and it was like, my God, we have to get rid of this guy. But think about it for a second. We, we can live without food. Human beings are amazing creatures, right? Not, I’m not talking about AI or robots. I’m talking about human beings. We are incredible creatures. We were created by a power that’s beyond all of us, right?

But what we can’t we can live without food you can literally go or Yeah, exactly. I think it’s a week one week if you don’t have water you will your organs will literally shut down You can go without food for months months

Dylan Silver (24:10.104)
and not live without water. You’ll die within like what, seven days?

Dylan Silver (24:20.728)
For months, yeah, I’ve heard that before. Seven days and you’re dead.

Carl (24:22.789)
And by the way, fasting, I’m on, next week I start, every month I do a 100 hour fast. I fast for four days. It’s really good for you. It’s really good for you. But however, you have to drink water every day. You can drink coffee, water or tea. But you have to hydrate every day. Otherwise your organs will shut down, your kidneys and your liver. Yeah. But people don’t realize that, right? We are so spoiled in the United States. All right, let me ask.

Dylan Silver (24:31.15)
Hmm.

Dylan Silver (24:43.96)
They will.

Dylan Silver (24:49.526)
I have no idea. was the first time that you went abroad? Do you remember what year it was when you went abroad for the first time? Did it totally change your perspective like it did mine?

Carl (24:55.493)
1980.

well i i want to get into play hockey so that was canada’s kind of like united states but the first time i went to a you know the first time i went to mexico was probably in in the late eighties

Dylan Silver (25:03.374)
10 is kind of the same thing, yeah.

developing.

Dylan Silver (25:12.514)
Did you have the same experience that I did where it was like, just completely changed your perspective? Yeah.

Carl (25:17.637)
100%. All Americans should travel. By the way, Europeans travel. Europeans, people in South America, and that’s why they have a different perspective. Americans should travel. Listen, I live in Chicago. I literally have friends of mine that grew up in Chicago. They went to college in Chicago.

Dylan Silver (25:22.542)
They do, they have to.

Carl (25:36.025)
They live in Chicago. They’ve never left Chicago, right? And I’ve lived on the East Coast. I’m from Cleveland. I lived on the West Coast. I lived on the North Coast of America. I lived on the South Coast of America. Traveling is one of the most eye-opening because you meet people and the other thing, you get a real appreciation about how good we have it here, right? Anybody that complains, anybody that complains about living in the United States should just go for one month and live somewhere else.

Dylan Silver (25:39.244)
Really?

Dylan Silver (25:53.592)
You do. You do.

Dylan Silver (26:01.034)
One month. Yeah, the roads, the roads, the water, and our life-saving medical. Like, if you get into a horrible car accident, this is the country that you want to be in. You know?

Carl (26:12.741)
Oh my God, you talk about the roads, I’ll tell you a quick story. When I was in Ireland, I rented a car.

And the person said, you want tire insurance? I’m saying, what, tire insurance? She goes, well, where are you traveling? I told her where I was going. I went around the Ring of Kerry, right, all around southern Ireland. She goes, oh, you definitely want tire insurance. I’m like, what are you talking about? She said, get the tire insurance. I said, OK, I insured the tire. On my way back to the airport a week later, I drove for a week all over Ireland. On my way back to the airport, I hit a pothole, and I blew my tire. So it would have cost me like $500 if I

Dylan Silver (26:33.772)
Yeah, what?

Carl (26:49.165)
have a tire insurance. What’s my point? The roads in Ireland…

Dylan Silver (26:52.898)
roads.

Crazy. Carl, I wanted to ask you a hockey question. I’m not a hockey guy, but I lived in New England for a handful of years and now I’m in DFW. We have our stars, which are, of course, we love them and they’re doing so well. And then recently we had that USA Canada match where the dudes threw their gloves down like four times. And I’m not a hockey guy, but watching this, I’m like, this is the greatest sport ever.

And I’m like a UFC guy, I jiu-jitsu, I like watching wrestling, and I have so much respect for how difficult those sports are. But I have to say, hockey the last few months has been some of the most entertaining sporting events that I’ve seen.

Carl (27:37.647)
Well, I’ll tell you what, right now is the playoff season, right? So in hockey, and I played hockey since I was a kid, like six years old, and I played semi-professional. I never made the NHL. I wasn’t that good, but I was pretty good. But hockey has three seasons, The first half of the season, the second half of the season, and the playoffs. Now is the, the playoffs are unbelievable. They’re unbelievable. And by the way, I’m a huge fan of the fighting, right? The USC or whatever it is.

are bad asses. those guys, I would never tangle with those guys, Hockey players are really good athletes, right? It’s the only sport besides polo where you don’t touch the field and you don’t touch the puck or the ball. In polo you’re on a horse and you use a mallet, right? In hockey you’re on skates and you use a stick. You never actually touch the object of the game, right? Like a ball.

Dylan Silver (28:09.944)
Yeah.

Carl (28:31.285)
Hockey players are really good athletes. We could play any sport. We could play football, baseball, basketball. You can’t take a basketball player and put them on skates and play hockey, right? And so I’m very biased, but it’s not, it’s a very, it’s a gentleman’s sport, believe it or not. Most hockey players are gentlemen. Now we fight because you get pissed off and you’re skating around. Fighting is actually part of the game because if somebody does something that is out of the norm or illegal or dirty, a dirty

And the referee is not watching, they won’t get a penalty. But you can go up to him and square off with him and say, hey, you just took your stick and you hit me in the neck or whatever, right? And you can drop the gloves and you can settle the score right then and there. Fighting is part of hockey. It’s not a violent sport. For people that play hockey, it’s part of the sport. It’s a self-regulating mechanism in the sport. And here’s a…

Dylan Silver (29:26.446)
I loved it Carl, watching those Team USA versus Team Canada. I felt patriotic watching. I think it was two brothers, was phenomenal. USA, what a great sporting event.

Carl (29:35.973)
Yeah.

Well, you know, here’s the kicker. Those guys, get paid. And by the way, hockey players are the least paid professional athletes of all the athletes. They make less money. They don’t make anywhere near the same money as baseball, football, and basketball players. When they’re playing for the country, those guys are not playing for money. They’re playing for pride, and they’re playing for their country. That’s why they get, they get denser. And by the way, teammates, some of those guys, Canadian guys and American guys are on the same team. But when they’re playing for their country, they’re not on the same team.

They are out there to win it, right? And that was a brilliant move by the NHL, the National Hockey League. To have those four teams, that was brilliant. Because more people watch hockey over that week than watches the Olympics. I mean, it was a brilliant move on their part.

Dylan Silver (30:26.956)
It was phenomenal. It was phenomenal. Carl, we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go to get a hold of you?

Carl (30:31.973)
Yeah, so the best place is we have a website. It’s called greenlightenergy.solar, not dot com dot solar. And you can email me. My first name starts with C, so it’s C-A-R-L at greenlightenergy.solar. You know, I’d to have a conversation. passionate about this. Like I said, I believe in what we’re doing. From a real estate perspective, whether you own a home or a building, you can literally become your own power company. So instead of consuming energy,

you can produce your own energy and it makes sense. The payback is usually within three to six years. So if you invest in that system, within three to six years, depending on the size of system, you will pay yourself back and then your energy is free for the next 20 years. So you made a good point. If you could have locked in your energy bill 10 years ago when it was 30, 40 bucks or 50 bucks or whatever, and have that bill for the next 30 years, you would have done it. Well, you’re in the same spot.

Now, if you could put solar on your building or your home, you will literally produce your own energy and you will no longer be subject to the power companies that continuously increase the cost of your energy. So you’ll be in the energy business for yourself. It’s worth taking a look at. Now, not every home is, or not every building is good for solar, but it’s worth taking a look at. And for us, if you’re in Northern Illinois or Ohio or Michigan, I’d be more than happy, our team of engineers and designers would be more than happy to take a look at your system.

All we need to do is take a look at your electric bill. So if you want to reach out to me, you can email me at carl at greenlightenergy.solar. And you’ll just mention this podcast and we’ll be more than happy to, as matter of fact, we’ll give you a 10 % discount. We’ll discount the price of our system by 10 % just for being on Dylan’s podcast here.

Dylan Silver (32:19.47)
Carl, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Carl (32:23.459)
I appreciate the invitation. Thank you, Don.