Gareth (00:00:02) - But they don't invest any money in innovation…less than 1% of their budgets. But they are the biggest spenders in terms of politics and manipulating policy and regulations. And so it just shows that they're in this very protectionist phase, that they want to protect their monopolies instead of embracing the opportunity to change the whole dynamic of the system.

Ariana (00:00:30) - Welcome to Secret Ops, the podcast uncovering the world of operations one episode at a time. I'm your host, Arianna Cofone, and today's guest is Gareth Evans, the CEO of Veckta, which is a company that accelerates and simplifies the deployment of energy solutions on site for companies globally. This interview made me feel kind of like a kid in a candy store because I have so many questions around energy and how you go about even tackling this problem. Where do you start? How do you navigate all of the operational complexities? And I have to tell you that Gareth explained things in a way that made me see this industry differently and made me rethink a lot of the assumptions I had going into this conversation.

Ariana (00:01:20) - So let's jump in. Gareth, thank you so much for joining us on Secret Ops today. I am thrilled to talk about a topic that's been on my bucket list since starting Secret Ops, which is about energy and you are the man to talk to about it. Clearly.

Gareth (00:01:37) - I'm excited to go on this journey with you.

Ariana (00:01:41) - So let's talk about your career and how you got into the world of energy. Can you just give us that winding path that got you where you are today?

Gareth (00:01:51) - It definitely has been a winding path. It's been an exciting one. You can tell from my accent I’m not originally from San Diego, where I'm based now, originally from Liverpool, England. I was allways brought up to be into adventures and experiences versus materialistic things. Loved geography and environmental science geared my life towards being fast jet pilot with the Air Force. I got sponsored by the Air Force to go through university, but decided at the end of that that it wasn't for me and started traveling around the world, got to do some crazy things, charity work in South America, training with the Shaolin monks in northeast China, traveling all through Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Gareth (00:02:33) - And then really kind–

Ariana (00:02:34) - What was it like to train with monks? I just…we have to stop there. What was that like?

Gareth (00:02:39) - That was amazing. That was definitely a life changing experience. Me and three friends, it's kind of amazing how we ended up doing it. It was the times, you know, early 2000 where we were using the Internet, but it wasn't an everyday part of our lives. And one of our friends said, I just found this thing online. It looks pretty interesting. It might be a good way to round out our university lives and for I think it was $700, we got two months worth of training. We had to commit to two months minimum. And all we got was an email saying you have to be on this train platform on this day at this time. And it was like 12 hours northeast of Beijing. And so we randomly booked some flights, showed up. They had a translator for us knowing that we were foreigners and this was a super unique area of a traditional temple in the middle of farmland. The local populace were still on donkey and cart. They drop their kids off at the age of three to this monastery, and that's where they would grow up. That was their school. That was their training. And so, yeah, from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m., almost every day, apart from the weekends, we would get abused. We'd got super fit. We'd get up at 5 a.m. every morning. We'd have to run up and down this hill in the dark. Then they'd make us stretch and then we'd do tai chi as the sun came up to build our chi energy. And then after breakfast, we'd learn kung fu all day. And then in the evening you could fight with the local kids. And so that's when you got to practice your skills and do what they called sand boxing, which is almost like what we'd call UFC style fighting. So it was incredible.

Ariana (00:04:18) - Oh my goodness, that could just be a whole episode talking about that. But I also have a background where I did a ton of traveling. How do you think traveling and those kind of really unique experiences inform the next phase of your life?

Gareth (00:04:33) - Yeah, I think it's a really overlooked opportunity. I took a year out before university and a year out afterwards, and then while all my friends were going off and doing clubbing holidays to Ibiza and other places like that, you know, I spent three weeks hiking from Geneva to Nice through the French Alps and always wanted to go on these kind of adventures and experiences. And I think it– one makes you really comfortable in yourself two, it makes you realize that you don't have to be surrounded by people all the time. Three, nature's incredible. We are all in our own ways, quite privileged. And what we have in our own backyard isn't exactly what everyone else experiences. And they're kind of the experiences that make you realize that there needs to be greater opportunity for all. Definitely. I'm not a believer in equal outcomes, but definitely equal opportunities, and it certainly isn't like that today. And it kind of gives you that passion, purpose mission to go and make an impact.

Ariana (00:05:31) - Absolutely. So how did it energize you? What were the next steps after the travel?

Gareth (00:05:35) - Yeah, it was really amazing. So I had this environmental science degree. I didn't have a clue what to do with it. And the oil and gas industry was booming in Canada. And so I got the opportunity to spend several years cleaning up old oil and gas well sites throughout the Rocky Mountains. So remote areas living in the boonies and working with hardcore kind of construction crews, digging up old, well sites, treating and remediating the soil and then converting it back to forestry land. So that was really inspiring to be able to take these contaminated lands and turn them back to nature. I've got a few tent pads built on remote sites that I built for myself that I'll have to get back to one day and that really then opened up many doors. The consulting company I was part of was acquired by a major corporation and there were 40,000 people spread all around the world. So for many that was, you know, death to the culture of a small team.

Gareth (00:06:31) - But for my wife and I, who both met at work, it was an opportunity. So we ended up putting our hands up to go and live in the Middle East. I spent two years working in and out of Iraq and that was really the game changing moment for me, was seeing what was extracting oil and gas reserves for our energy hungry economies while the local populace was surviving on two hours of power a day, if that. And so the infrastructure wasn't…it was devastated after the war. And you just can't live on that power. You know, it impacts everything. Energy is the lifeblood of everything. And so I didn't realize at the time, but I went on to do a lot of work for mining, oil and gas, LNG, manufacturing companies all around the world. And my last role was leading the global power consulting business, and that's where I really started with the team I was working with, seeing the increasing need for affordable, clean, reliable power globally and there just not being a good opportunity or solution for business leaders to access what was right for their business in a really streamlined way.

Gareth (00:07:36) - So we incubated the idea for several years and then spun it out from the business in 2019.

Ariana (00:07:42) - What was the evolution of the incubator phase? I'm curious. We'll get into this more so when we talk about infrastructure, but where do you even begin to try and solve this enormous problem? How does that even start?

Gareth (00:07:54) - Yeah, I was really lucky. So within the corporation that I was working with, we had a consulting business. We also had a construction business and an operational business. So I think with a few really gifted people that were within the team, I was leading, we realized, one, that there was a pain point in the industry. You know, customers wanted to be able to get access to those solutions, but they didn't know where to start, who to turn to, or what was possible. And so we as consultants were charging them huge amounts of money and giving them pretty substandard answers. You know, we're using spreadsheets to do these very complex analyses. And then we'd essentially give them this glossy report and say, now we're going to figure it out and it just leads to inaction.

Gareth (00:08:36) - Or on the flip side, they were being sold to by people with solutions in the market, you know, solar panels, batteries, gas turbines. But because most business leaders have never really thought about energy ever, they just didn't know who to trust or how to compare options. And so it just led to indecision and inaction. We started testing this. How could we automate the optimization of what is the right system for you, Ariana, to meet your business needs? So we incubated that within the corporation, but then we realized the whole market was actually broken. You know, it was very biased, was very uncoordinated, and we couldn't correct that from within a corporation. You know, corporations have processes, bureaucracies. And so we submitted an innovation idea, got a small amount of funding, and we used that to then pull together key stakeholders from across all the different aspects of the business. And we rented an Airbnb for a week and we said, “What could this look like if we had a completely blank slate?” And then we presented that back and said, “We think there's something here, but it can't be built within the business, we're going to start a new business and do you want to be a part of that?” And so they actually became our first investors to give us some runway to go.

Gareth (00:09:47) - Wow. Yeah. So a very entrepreneurial journey almost.

Ariana (00:09:50) - Yeah, that is I mean, I don't think I have heard those many stories before where essentially you see a problem that your customers have and you're like,” Oh. Hold up. This is not a customer problem. This is an industry problem. And we need to get a bunch of collective minds together to rethink this entire way of working.” And then, “hey, the company that we work for, we can't actually do this with you. So we're going to actually start this thing. And will you invest?” Wow, that's bold. That is bold. Were you scared to do it? That sounds kind of scary, but exciting.

Gareth (00:10:25) - Yeah, I think it's funny because in the moment, now, I think certainly having a very supportive family helps a lot. I think my very first ever performance review was at the age of 22, they said to me, “What's your aspiration in the next five years?” And I said, “I want to be CEO.”

Gareth (00:10:44) - And they laughed at me and kind of just thought, this kid's delusional. But I think I always had the desire to lead a business and do my, you know, have control over making an impact on the world. So I think, yes, every day is still nerve wracking. It's still scary. There's a lot of unknowns. I still get punched in the face 50 times a day. But the ability to have that impact and actually disrupt an entire industry that's been operating the same way for the last hundred years, that's the risk and the exciting aspects of this.

Ariana (00:11:21) - So let's talk about how your business is disrupting this industry and then we'll talk more about the operational tie in. Just give listeners an idea of what you're doing on a macro level, a high level, and then a granular level. What does that look like?

Gareth (00:11:35) - Yeah, so macro level, we're all passive consumers of energy today. So whether it's yourself, me, whether it's all your listeners in their businesses, we all receive energy from what we call utilities and the centralized grid.

Gareth (00:11:50) - So we generate power at a big power plant somewhere remote to where we operate. The power comes down these series of lines and then it gets distributed to our place of work or residence. And so we have no real control over where it comes from, if and when we'll get it, what it should cost. And what we're seeing is that because the grid, particularly in the US, is now 7000 years old, it's not as reliable as it should be. It's hard to maintain. It's becoming more expensive to keep operating. And we have, you know, changing needs that it wasn't necessarily designed for. And so as such, energy prices are going up, reliability is going down. Meanwhile, everyone wants to be cleaner and greener, which they can't control if they're just buying energy passively. So our disruption is supporting businesses to get access to their own on site energy solutions. So being able to generate and store energy right where they need it. And so our approach is to support those non-technical buyers, the business leaders who know nothing about energy.

Gareth (00:12:54) - Here's the opportunity. Here's how much money it can save you. Here's the outage support it can support you through. Here's how much you could reduce your emissions. Here's the system that can meet those needs. And we've considered all technologies. So we're completely agnostic. Solar, battery storage, gas, diesel fuel cells, electric vehicles. So we're not trying to push a solution onto them. We're trying to empower them to see what is the right solution. And then we get them firm quotes from suppliers in the market such that they can then decide who they want to have build this system because they're going to be around for the next 10, 20 years. And so it's all about how do you plan it, how do you deploy it? And then how do you monitor and optimize this system to get the best value for the business. And so it's really just disrupting how people think about energy, how they procure energy, how they supplement their grid power today, because we don't advise people cut the cord and don't buy energy from the utility, but maybe buy energy when it's at its cheapest versus at its most expensive, use it as a backup versus being your only source and just really creating that energy sovereignty for businesses globally.

Ariana (00:14:01) - The thing that struck me in what you were saying is that the educational component is incredibly important. You're trying to lay that foundation so that you can start to have those conversations before you even talk about solutioning. You have to start with that educational component. Was that a lesson that you learned, like you knew out the gate, we are going to have to educate people? Or was it a thing that you learned the hard way where it's like you started to jump into figuring out solutions and then realize, oh, people are many steps back from this conversation and we need to educate first.

Gareth (00:14:33) - It's it's still hard, honestly. And we learned the hard way. You know, we kind of came into this Covid kicked in as soon as we launched, which was another challenge for us operationally. But because we couldn't engage with our customers. So we created a product based on what we thought the industry needed. And that vision was you, Ariana, as the business leader of your company, come into our platform, upload a bunch of data, get some insights and self guide your way through.

Gareth (00:15:00) - Through to making this purchasing decision. And what we've realized is, one, people don't even know that they have options beyond utility power. Two, they don't know what on-site energy is. Three, they definitely don't want to be hands-on-tools, put in a bunch of data in which they don't even know where to find it. And so we've learned that, one, we need to educate the whole market. Hence a lot of collateral around blogs, newsletters, podcasts. It's all about how do we educate people? And then two, providing the infrastructure for them to get the outcomes without having to actually do anything themselves apart from, say, I'm interested. And then at Veckta, we've now sourced all the data, done the optimization and we give them the options to choose from and we support them to make the right decision. But it's all about really simplifying it, automating it, removing the barriers to entry. We are a marketplace platform. It's all about connecting supply with demand. But we've built all this other infrastructure just to get people to a point of knowing what it is that they want to buy, which was never really the plan.

Gareth (00:16:04) - But it's become a very key component of the whole transition.

Ariana (00:16:08) - And I'm also sure from a speed standpoint, things are changing in this industry quickly. So I also can imagine that's a difficult thing to think about if you're the customer. Thinking “I hear all these things, but what's legitimately something that I need to be thinking about and what's not, what are blockers, what are things I should be investing in?” And then, you know, if we're talking ten years, 15 years down the path, what's going to actually still be valid? You know, I don't want to, again, spend a ton of money on something that's going to become antiquated.

Gareth (00:16:36) - Exactly.

Ariana (00:16:37) - We know it's going to be. But we’d like to get a little bit more time out of it, right?

Gareth (00:16:41) - Yeah. So that's why the platform is now set up to be an entire energy transition plan. So where do you consume energy today across your portfolio facilities? How much does it cost you? What's the emission profile? Where would you get the greatest return on investment for doing something, being able to buy it, deploy it, and then we monitor it in real time and then support the business to say, you know, by the way, your utility rates have changed.

Gareth (00:17:05) - And now one of these other projects that didn't previously make sense now make sense or the system that you put in five years ago, maybe you could now upgrade it with some new technology and here's all the other benefits. So it's been able to constantly take people on that journey because you're right, this isn't a one and done, I'm going to build something and then I've solved all my problems. There's huge benefits, but the more businesses can stay on top of it, the better.

Ariana (00:17:30) - Well, this ties in beautifully to the trifecta of operations. People, process technology. Automation and all these things that you were just talking about. I think for people who aren't necessarily in energy operations, can you just connect the dots for us. When you're thinking about energy, how is operations becoming a part of that conversation? In my, you know, novice brain, I think it is probably everything. But what are the things that you're thinking about?

Gareth (00:17:57) - Yeah, I'd say obviously the key stakeholders in these decisions are one, the finance team.

Gareth (00:18:02) - So they're hypersensitive around costs and today they have no control over their costs. So if you're at the mercy of every year, the utility increases in your rates five, ten, in some cases 40%, we've seen as high as in here in California. Finance is hypersensitive to that. How can they lock in their costs and know that they've got certainty to plan for their business? Then you've got the sustainability leaders who are very concerned about sustainability, reducing emissions, hitting corporate targets and objectives. And then you've got the, you know, the plant operators and managers and leaders who are responsible for hitting production targets, making sure that they are they have no downtime and they're the ones most concerned about outages and resilience, because if you lose power, even if it's just a flicker, it can really impact the operations. And for some more complex businesses, the power goes off even for a short amount of time. It can then take days to weeks to bring the system back online to full production. You know, Samsung, several years ago during the Texas deep freeze, they announced that they lost $270 million in that one week due to loss of product, loss of production, having to bring the systems back online.

Gareth (00:19:16) - And that's a pretty extreme version, but it just highlights the impacts. And especially for businesses with perishable products, complex lines, chemical facilities, refineries, oil and gas safety becomes also a real massive element of this. So yeah, so they're kind of the key stakeholders we’re often engaging with and they've all got their own interests. But ultimately that's the advantage of these onsite energy systems is you get all three of those as a triple win when you do it right.

Ariana (00:19:47) - I'm thinking about those stakeholders. They're all high stakes stakeholders. There's not one that's like a nice to have in that situation. You know, all of them, to their varying degrees, are incredibly vital to thinking about this. So let's start with technology. What are some key pieces of technology that you all lean on to help bring visibility into the energy space for your clients?

Gareth (00:20:12) - From a perspective of how we approach it at Veckta.

Ariana (00:20:15) - Yeah, that would be great.

Gareth (00:20:16) - Yeah. So software is obviously key to ensuring that these complex systems, because we're talking about hundreds of thousands of variables that impact the right solution.

Gareth (00:20:27) - You know, we've kind of moved past the point of just throwing some solar panels on a roof and hoping that that solves all our problems. You know, which combination of technologies will meet the business needs, especially if they are more than just a residence. You know, they've got quite complex needs, wants, restrictions, restrictions in terms of real estate, space, rooftop, can it handle solar? Do they have car parks? What's their current utility rate? How much energy do they use? When do they use it? What's the solar potential at that site? What's the fuel prices? So for every single location that we adjust into the platform, we capture about 5000 different data points specific to that site. And then we use that to feed an optimization engine, which then considers hundreds of thousands of variables to them. Recommend the optimal combination of technologies technically and financially. And so then we're able to show, “Hey, Arianna, this is where you're at today. But if you do this, you can save X hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. You can reduce your emissions by 20%. You can ride through an outage for up to hours or days, whatever the business needs are.” So that's what we focus on. You know, we have our own internal flywheel effect that we work towards every day and the top of the flywheel is providing actionable data and intelligence just so people can take the first step with confidence.

Ariana (00:21:51) - What percentage of your team are data scientists or data analysts? Like how much of your team kind of makes that up? Because you're talking about thousands of variables. And honestly, my head is spinning, even trying to think of what that looks like, managing that, acquiring that and cleaning that, like what percent of your team is just focused on that itself.

Gareth (00:22:11) - Team of 20 today and essentially half internally focused on product and dev work and half externally focused on education marketing sales. So that's the approach today. Feeling really good about where the products at. So we're hyper focused on go-to market and originating good customers with pain points and needs.

Gareth (00:22:32) - So that's the focus right now. And then we'll keep seesawing between winning work, building the product and then the other way around. So yeah.

Ariana (00:22:41) - Honestly, I really want to see it in action. I'm just like, I want to see all this going on behind the scenes peek under the hood. So when we talk about process within the energy sector. Yeah, how do you begin to break down the process? Because from my understanding and just the tiny bit that I can gather, it's incredibly complicated. All of these processes and you're not dealing with one particular one, you're probably dealing with multiple types of processes and stakeholders, different parts of the world. How do you begin to consider and inform and help people through that process stage?

Gareth (00:23:19) - So the real key in all minds is placing the decision makers in control of the process. So the way the market is set up today, which we talked on a bit before, is you've got all these amazing suppliers in the market: constructors, equipment operators, capital providers, but they're all selfishly trying to sell you whatever makes sense for them versus what makes sense for you.

Gareth (00:23:40) - So we really advise baseline where you're at today, assess where you're going to get the greatest return on investment, determine internally what solution is right for you, and then go to market and tell the suppliers exactly what you want them to quote you such that you get those apples to apples comparisons back and then you can make a very informed decision around what matters to you is it cost is it schedule, is it team, is it experience? And being able to really select the partner that you want to go on that journey with? And there's four big levers for businesses to consider when they want to go on this journey. We always advise reducing your energy consumption as much as possible through energy efficiency practices. First, because there's no point in building a system to generate energy for energy that you may not need later. So reduce your energy consumption, build your onsite energy system to offset as much of your needs as possible. And then you've got options to buy what they call virtual power purchase agreements or renewable energy credits to reduce your emission profile.

Gareth (00:24:39) - But in a virtual means, you're not actually generating the energy, you're not consuming that energy, you're just buying a way of cleaning up your emissions. So they're the four big levers. And so it's about supporting business leaders to understand what those levers are and how they can achieve the best outcomes for whatever their business priorities are…which change.

Ariana (00:24:59) - Yeah, I can imagine. For some business leaders, that might be the first framework that they have to think about how they can control their energy consumption, where it has felt quite like you're beholden to the companies that are giving you energy and you don't really feel in control of that. But through all of these steps, in these dials, you can decide what makes most sense. Yeah, it again, that comes back to the people piece then, right? So it can be quite empowering but also overwhelming. So as you rounded out your team, what are some key players that help in connecting the dots for what you're doing internally as a business and what you're doing with your clients?

Gareth (00:25:37) - Yeah.

Gareth (00:25:37) - So, internally we always try to match the personality types with the people that we're selling to. So you can imagine the likes of the operations teams within businesses. They want to have access to data, they want to see information. They want to know it's not going to impact their day to day operations.

Ariana (00:25:55) - Continuity please!

Gareth (00:25:57) - Exactly. Yeah. So we have operational experts who do all the analytics and can convey that message. Then we have the likes of our sales team that can really convey the opportunity to the sustainability teams, because what we often find for sustainability teams is, one, they are typically new in their careers, so they don't necessarily know how to internally fight for money. And so being able to give them the ammunition to say we've got these objectives, here's what it's going to cost us, but here's why we should do it, and here's why you should allocate us some money because they typically don't hold the budgets, which is very interesting. And then obviously for the finance and the leadership, being able to then paint the vision.

Gareth (00:26:38) - So that's where I like to come in and be more engaged. Where should you be going? How should you be thinking about it? Should you work with your board and your executive team to convey the opportunities? So we try and balance that across ops sales, marketing, marketing is all about trying to build awareness prior to us even showing up. And then obviously the dev team, they're less customer facing, but they give us all the firepower to deliver the outcomes that our customers need without wanting to be in front of them.

Ariana (00:27:07) - One of the things that when I think about, you know, talking to clients, I think before I sort of doing that, I really thought it was sort of, you know, somebody within the sales function talking to a client. And that definitely is a dynamic when you're talking about more complex products, platforms, services. I find that it's rarely one person. It's a team of people that are educated and specialized in all of these different pieces that have to work together to get something moved past the dial line, because again, there's going to be that educational component.

Ariana (00:27:38) - There's going to be different people of different needs that you're going to be selling to. How have you found working together as a team? Do you think it's like a group effort or do you sort of pass the baton at different stages? How has that worked for you all?

Gareth (00:27:53) - Yeah, we're certainly really embracing the likes of some of the AI tech to record meetings and such that we can say a sales person goes in first, will capture the conversation, will really try and understand what personality type is it that we're dealing with? What are their priorities? Who else needs to be involved in future conversations? Being able to learn from their tone, their questions, how we should be approaching them. So that's been really exciting. In the last, I'd say, six months, I'd say it's a constant fine line between definitely being the thought leaders and knowing the technical aspects of this without overwhelming customers. You know, I was just texting with the customer this morning or a prospective customer. I asked him for feedback on our team that went in and met them yesterday and he said it worked really well because our VP of Ops is super technical and she wanted to get into the details.

Gareth (00:28:46) - But he said they came across very technical and very knowledgeable and maybe with other customers they'd need to be more salesy in the big picture because it would be quite overwhelming, you know, from his perspective. So it's a real fine line trying to juggle how you approach those conversations and how deep you go. And yeah.

Ariana (00:29:05) - Yeah, it's always a balance. I have experienced it from a technology education standpoint where you just kind of see a glaze happen. Same with operations too. Like I know when I've gone to operational nerd on somebody, there's just this frozen smile glaze that you're like, “Oh, I lost him”. You can kind of pull yourself back in and that like, it happens in a second where all of a sudden, you know that you've stepped outside of this space. That makes sense because really, the things that you're thinking about are quite futuristic. You know, they're incredibly progressive and things that people just don't even have on their radar yet. And that is the benefit of what you're doing and it's the challenge as well. So let's talk about the inside scoop. So these are some questions that essentially give us a peek behind the scenes. From the first question, I just want to talk about the energy sector as a whole. What do you think people who know nothing about the energy sector get wrong about it?

Gareth (00:30:00) - The biggest misconception is sustainability comes at the expense of profitability. And I think if you approach it the wrong way, absolutely. You know, if you just go and buy a bunch of renewable energy credits and so now you've got increasing energy costs and you're buying credits on top of that to offset your emissions. Yes, it's bad business. The reason why we're so excited about on-site energy is, by deploying these systems, you can actually save a huge amount of money on your energy bills as well as choosing more sustainable outcomes. We just finished an assessment for a winery in Northern California, actually, and we're able to save them 400 grand a year in energy costs as well as reduce their emissions by 40%.

Gareth (00:30:42) - And so you can see this isn't a these aren't small dollar amounts. It's not saving a few pennies. You know, a big industrial manufacturer in the northeast of the US, they have the ability over the life of their asset to save over $10 million in terms of these systems. And now with the likes of the Inflation Reduction Act, there's very big incentives and tax credits for businesses. And so it's a very, very good time for people to do this, because not only do the systems already pay for themselves very quickly now with the tax credits, you can get between 30 and 70% tax credits back on every dollar you spend. And so they pay super quickly.

Ariana (00:31:24) - Whoah, those numbers. When you said winery in California, I was like, “oh my God, the energy” immediately I was like, “Oh my goodness.” It must be interesting because my assumption is that your clients are of all different industries, of all different sizes. So you're constantly sort of having to flip the script a little bit.

Ariana (00:31:40) - Are there common themes across the clients that you're seeing that always hold true, or is there a lot of like context switching?

Gareth (00:31:47) - Definitely. You want to be able to talk the right language and then use the right terms with the right stakeholders. I'd say the way the platform is built, it's sector agnostic. So we can kind of switch between them quite easily. But definitely from a sales and a marketing perspective, we try very hard to make sure we have the right people on the team that know the specific sectors. I'd say today for sure we're seeing the most success with the manufacturing sector and the food and beverage sectors, and they've got very similar pain points but in slightly different ways. So food and beverage, they've got perishable products, so they can't afford the power to go off. They operate on lean margins so any cost savings is a bonus because they're consumer facing. They want to be cleaner and greener. On the manufacturing side, it's more like supply chain pressure. So we're working with an automobile manufacturer right now and they're being told if you want to produce the EV for this other company, you have to demonstrate that you're carbon neutral by 2025. And so now they're scrambling to say, how do we achieve that? They're very big energy consumers. So we typically see nice cost savings, so quite different pressure points, but with the same kind of outcomes, if you know what I mean.

Ariana (00:33:02) - Yeah, you're like making me have flashbacks to when I was up doing food supply chain stuff. You said both of the things. It's incredibly stressful. I think any time that you have a product that has a shelf life, every day counts. Every day does, especially if you are more in natural food or, you know, the space where you have less preservatives. You know, an issue with a freight delivery can be massive, massive losses. And then the supply chain, too. You know, I think a lot has changed in the last couple of years. In the last ten years, I would say the entire options that you have to run a supply chain are different. You know, I was bootstrapping stuff because I was in a startup phase, but still the technology was super old and antiquated and that's actually why I got into technology because I was like, All these tools suck and I want better ones. And when you put both of those together, I can only imagine that getting the energy plan must feel empowering after being quite reactive for so long, having to say, “We're actively choosing this.” Which I guess gets me to my next question. When we're talking about deploying onsite energy solutions, what do you think is the hardest part about localizing the energy supply.

Gareth (00:34:23) - The actual systems themselves? The technology is really good now. You know, the cost of solar and storage has come down over 80% in the last ten years. So it's very, very cost competitive. The systems are very reliable. The constructors exist to go and deploy these systems quite efficiently. There's even amazing capital providers in the market. So businesses don't want to spend the penny financing these systems. Other people will come in, finance them, build them, own them, operate them and just sell you energy back. That's less than what you pay the utility.

Gareth (00:34:50) - So all those things are amazing, but it's now how do we create one? The enabling technologies to give the business leaders the visibility of what the opportunities is and the confidence to act. And then secondly, the utilities are certainly not embracing this with open arms and making it super easy for companies to interconnect to the grid, negotiate rates, get systems permitted. So that's going to be a bit of a continuing battle. And we're seeing quite a few states now realizing that this is a challenge and there's some more favorable states to operate in, but there's certainly states within the US and places around the world where it's still a challenge to get the support to do this from a regulatory perspective. But you can tell from the likes of the Inflation Reduction Act, the fact that the government is incentivizing this, the intent is to create more flexibility in the system. So it's really just, I'd say, the old school mentality. You know, the utilities have operated the same way for 100 years and rightfully so.

Gareth (00:35:50) - They're super, super focused on safety and reliability, but they don't invest any money in innovation. You know, less than 1% of their budgets. But they are the biggest, biggest spenders in terms of politics and manipulating policy and regulations. And so it just shows that they're in this very protectionist phase, that they want to protect their monopolies instead of embracing the opportunity to change the whole dynamic of the system.

Ariana (00:36:21) - It's very interesting because I am not in your industry at all, but you're articulating the feelings I have felt for many years around frustrations that I had no idea how to articulate, which is, you know, we want to see a future that actually is possible. And the fear is if the infrastructure isn't there, then we're always going to be chasing our tails and that needs to stop. So it's refreshing that people like you and your team are proactively trying to figure out a way forward that helps to educate people, but also helps to make a solution realized in today.

Gareth (00:37:02) - Yeah, it's really, really important. Like we've got three core values that we operate by every day, challenge limits because this whole industry needs–

Ariana (00:37:11) - You’ve got to!

Gareth (00:37:12) - To adapt purposefully because there's too many knee jerk reactions. So how do we actually do this with purpose and then empower co-creation? No one's going to do this on their own. So how do we do it together? And I think you're absolutely spot on. You know, there's the big push for electric vehicle deployments right now. And in the same week Governor Newsom here in California last year said we're going to stop selling gas cars in the future. And he set the date and he committed to it the same week that he was asking people not to charge their cars because they were worried about blackouts during certain periods of time. And just the infrastructure balance is very complex right now because we haven't planned purposefully and we're trying to achieve these political objectives without it necessarily being considered operationally. That's going to be an ongoing battle. But I like that we're making the commitments because it will force us all to innovate, to get there.

Gareth (00:38:04) - But I think they're being made in a fairly blind manner right now.

Ariana (00:38:10) - Yeah. Now, if someone is listening to your journey and they're like, I want to get into this industry, you're inspiring me. Where would you recommend people begin to start to get into it?

Gareth (00:38:22) - Yeah, well, it's a super exciting space and I think there's a real shortage of people. So I think for anyone excited about getting into it, whether it's startups, whether it's very mature businesses that produce equipment or construct these systems, there's a huge amount of opportunities, I think certainly to get the way I came through from a consulting perspective and an engineering company, that was a really nice way to get a very broad cross-section of how the industry operates before I dig deep. But yeah, I'd encourage people to reach out to the businesses that they’re most excited about because most of them are probably desperate for access to key people and because this is a fairly young industry, it's not like if you don't have this experience on your resume, you don't qualify. We're all learning on the fly. We're all figuring out together. And I think that's what makes it super exciting.

Ariana (00:39:12) - Man, I'm jazzed. I'm like, “how can I– how can I be a part of this?” This seems really interesting. This has been just such a treat. I really appreciate you breaking this down for the listeners, obviously, but for myself as well. I've always been curious but have kind of been a little confused with all of the contradictory information that I hear around it. So it's interesting that you're approaching it from that sort of agnostic mindset to just help show people their options and to get them moving forward one step at a time. That's really powerful. So thank you for that. We're going to wrap up with some rapid fire questions to learn more about you, Gareth, as a human being. So we're just going to go quickly, whatever comes to your mind when I ask it, just go for it. So the first one is what is your favorite part of the day?

Gareth (00:40:05) - Walking my son to school every morning. That's amazing.

Ariana (00:40:09) - Oh, that sounds awesome. I just pictured it in my head as you said it. What book are you currently reading or what audiobook are you listening to?

Gareth (00:40:18) - I’m actually big into podcasts right now, so I'd say less on the other two, but High Performance or The Diary of a CEO are my go-tos. Most days I try to listen to them while I'm working out.

Ariana (00:40:32) - Love it.

Ariana (00:40:33) - What is the best purchase you've made under $50?

Gareth (00:40:37) - Ooh, that's a really tough one. Let's see.

Ariana (00:40:39) - It's so funny. This one really stumps people.

Gareth (00:40:42) - Probably a really good, hazy IPA.

Ariana (00:40:49) - That's a good one. What is your favorite quote?

Gareth (00:40:53) - “Live life on the edge or you're taking up too much space.”

Ariana (00:40:57) - And what is the most important lesson you've learned in your life so far?

Gareth (00:41:01) - Say yes. Embrace the journey. Dig deep. Grit it out. Get it done.

Ariana (00:41:06) - And last question, which is, what would you like to be when you grow up?

Gareth (00:41:11) - I would like to be the CEO of the business that has disrupted the entire energy industry and is the platform every business leader in the world thinks about when they think about energy.

Ariana (00:41:25) - Amazing. If people are listening and they're like, I want to just follow everything that's happening with Gareth and the team, where can they follow you? Where can they find you?

Gareth (00:41:34) - Yep, definitely. Our website is a really great resource for blogs, articles, Veckta.com. We did just start our own podcast called Renewable Rides, so definitely check that out. And yeah, LinkedIn is probably where I'm most active, so come and find me on LinkedIn.

Ariana (00:41:54) - Amazing. We appreciate you so much for sharing your knowledge so generously. And a big thanks to all the Secret Ops listeners out there. Please remember to follow us wherever you find your podcasts and check us out at secret-ops.com.

Ariana (00:42:08) - See you next time!