We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Auston Taber. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Auston below.

Auston, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you tell us about an important lesson you learned while working at a prior job?

There was a small “mom and pop” solar shop that I had been working at for several years. I was dying to get in with a big “Corporate” solar company, thinking that would be the way to go. I had already tried applying to the local big one without success. I didn’t give up though, I persisted and kept applying and going in.

FINALLY I had an interview. I aced it! I was hired. It was the biggest lesson learned/disappointment of my career. I came in too cocky and arrogant. They started me at the ground level and I already had 4 years experience. More than some of the other folks that were out there. I made sure they knew how much I knew.

I became a pariah, no one wanted to work with me, and when I made mistakes, I blamed others instead of taking ownership. It was a brutal lesson to learn, but everyone needs to experience it.

Being humble and owning your mistakes is a life skill that should be taught to everyone in school. It’s how you become self aware instead of blind to your own actions. It’s hard, it’s not fun, but it’s the only way to become a truly self aware individual.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Most of my time after highschool was spent in the service industry, phone support, restaurant work, and some construction. I ended up working in a high end italian place by the beach. Every morning I would surf, shower, run errands, then go to work at night. I lived just 2 blocks from the ocean. It was amazing. Unfortunately I wasn’t going anywhere. I didn’t have a career, I had no college, and weeks and months all looked the same. I looked around at some of my co-workers and some were in there 40’s/50’s, I didn’t want to be working at the same place for that long. I needed to do something with my life.

I decided to become and electrician. My family comes from construction and it appeared to be a good place to get started. My feet hit the pavement running and I started knocking on doors until I found a job as an installer at a small solar company. For over 4 years I dug holes and trenches, I pulled wire, I climbed ladders with solar panels on my back, and I gained in experience and confidence. The next 2 years were spent jumping solar jobs until I received a phone call from a solar inverter OEM, they hired me and introduced me to the world of utility scale field service. At this point I had 6 years of experience in solar and I spent the next 5 working as a field service engineer.

During that time I developed many core relationships that ended up providing the base for my business later on. I didn’t know it at the time but I had developed a reputation of solving issues. When I finally left the OEM I started receiving phone calls at my next job for help with products I had worked on at my previous position. I indulged my old clients and gave them the support they needed. This continued when I left that job as well. Eventually one of my clients suggested that I start a business to address these key industry concerns.

Thus Solar Support was born, we start with solving small single inverter issues at utility scale power sites. That become much larger when a hurricane impacted a large solar facility in North Carolina. Ove 10 inverter stations had been flooded and needed to be brought back online. Then there was a solar site that was ripped apart by a wind storm, then another where fires had destroyed a huge portion of the solar panels on site. More and more restoration projects followed.

We now restore and repower underperforming and damaged utility scale renewable energy facilities. It’s helping keep assets that were built 5-10 years ago continue to produce power. Thus helping the world to continue it’s transition to renewable energy.

Solar Support has been operating for 4 years and is now a subsidiary of RNWBL llc, a family of companies that leverage each other’s resources to handle larger and larger projects. We’re restoring 4 projects a year, as well as performing indepedent engineering for owners of solar assets, root cause analysis for O&M companies managing assets, and we provide a technical support service line for OEMs.

We’ve come a long ways, and there’s more to do to help transition power production away from coal and oil.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

We were catching our stride the second year of business. There were 2 employees on payroll and I was looking to hire a third. Then our clients stopped paying. We had over $400,000.00 in unpaid invoices that were starting to age. One of our clients at $200,000.oo in overdue invoices and I focused on working with them. Unfortunately they were a large utility scale asset management owner and developer. I had very little leverage and I was at the mercy of their credit terms in order to do business with them.

I called, I called, and I called some more, every day trying to see when we would be paid. It was Christmas time and all of my credit cards, both business and personal were maxed out. I had a line of credit on my home and the payment was due. We had nothing left. It looked like my entire business was going to go down if we didn’t get paid in the next couple of weeks.

Thankfully I had been working on securing a line of credit for the business and it came through. It helped float us for a few weeks. Then the payments started flowing into the business. We were safe and profitable.

Lessons learned? Use other peoples cash, secure a line of credit as soon as you can. Utilize it regularly so you’re not using your money.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Tim Ferris’ podcast has helped greatly with ideas, direction, and inspiration. I also recommend James Clear’s newsletter. Both of these resources have led me to great books to read, new ideas to embrace, and inspiration to continue to work and not be burned out.

“Atomic Habits” for improving yourself
“Leadership and Self Deception” for improving your relationship with everyone around you.
“Traction” for building your business structure.
“Thinkertoys” for finding inspiration in your thoughts
“Tools of Titans” for seeing how others have come before you and done great things
“Tiny beautiful things” for realization that everyone has problems
“High output management” for leading a team
“The millionaire next door” for learning to deal with your success
“greenlights” for motivation and laughs

READ, then read some more. There’s so much out there that can help open your mind. Reading has been the best thing I’ve ever learned to love. Start now if you haven’t already.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.solar-support.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/austontaber/

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