Building a business strategy based on actions not words. Heather Myers, Spark No. 9.

Happy new year to all and welcome back to our first episode of 2025! 

Our guest this week is an entrepreneur who excels at building market strategies. Heather Myers of Spark Number 9 has created her own methodology for getting the market segment answers entrepreneurs so desperately need. An important distinction is that her method relies on observable behavior, not on surveys. 

 Heather's own business has flourished and was even the subject of a Harvard Business School case study. Heather joins us today to discuss how nature forward companies can leapfrog endless and costly pivots by applying her methodology to their own businesses. 

 Listen on Apple , Spotify, our website, or pretty much anywhere you listen to podcasts! And if you love what we do, don't forget to subscribe and leave a rating and review!

Transcript

Heather & Abigail

[00:00:00] Welcome back to the podcast where we celebrate innovation for a happy planet. Before we get started, I wanted to wish you all a very happy new year and thank you, our listeners and our sponsors for an incredible 2024. We had a substantial uptick in subscribers and our 57th episode, which was our last for last year, proved to be our best performing yet.

So all data shows that we are trending in the right direction.

Our guest this week is an entrepreneur who excels in building market strategies. Heather Myers of Spark Number 9 has created her own methodology for getting the market segment answers entrepreneurs so desperately need.

 And an important distinction is that her method relies on behavior, not on surveys. Heather's own business has flourished and was even the subject of a Harvard Business School case study. Heather joins us today to discuss how nature forward companies can leapfrog endless and costly pivots by applying her methodology to their [00:01:00] own businesses. 

Abigail: Welcome to the podcast, Heather.

Heather: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.

Abigail: Well, I'm excited to have you on. Tell me a little bit about what you do.

Heather: So I am a bit of a strategy nerd. I've spent a lot of my career in strategy roles, both in consulting firms and as part of big companies like Universal and Scholastic. And there's always a big challenge with strategy. No one really knows if it's going to work before you launch. So what I do at spark number nine really addresses a huge frustration I had while working in large organizations, which is lots of great strategic ideas get stuck on the shelf.

So we work with companies who want to grow and we help them answer three questions. [00:02:00]First, what should I launch? Second, who should I target? And third, is the market ready? Which is always the trickiest one, right? People spend a lot of time on the first two questions, but sometimes maybe leave the last one a little bit deprioritized.

Abigail: Interesting. So how do you go about this?

Heather: So yeah, so let's think about those three questions. There's lots of ways to answer them, right? So what should I launch? Who should I target? Is the market ready? A lot of companies use conventional market research, like focus groups and surveys, to try to understand whether they have the right product and whether people are ready to buy it.

Other companies just launch the product, right? It's the whole lean startup legacy. You're kind of, Fixing the plane while it's flying. At Spark, we kind of split the difference. We use advertising to test different strategies with different audiences. [00:03:00] So let's say you're launching a new sustainable beverage.

It's a flavored tablet that you drop into water and it's got really delicious and unusual flavors. So here's the question, should you launch at a Zesty? sustainable beverage option? Should you position it as something that's like, maybe super delicious for people who are drinking less alcohol, which is a big deal right now?

Maybe you should focus on like the crazy flavors like yuzu and persimmon or whatever it is. You don't know, right? And a lot of companies will just launch and cross their fingers. What we do at Spark is we test all three of those positions using ads. When we're finished, we can tell you the right position, the right packaging, how to message, a whole bunch of other variables.

But most importantly, we can also kind of describe the people, the audiences who want your product most, not just in terms of demographics, but But other stuff like [00:04:00] what product, what other products they like, what media they're interested in, what habits they have. So essentially what we are doing is using ad platforms to perform multivariate testing and what's.

so powerful about it is it's behavioral, right? Because this is the world we live in these days. We're not buying a product in a focus group. We're buying a product usually because we saw it online somewhere.

Abigail: I certainly have fell victim to that.

Heather: Me too. All too often on Instagram.

Abigail: So I think this is really interesting because we've heard about, some of the problems with surveys is that people aren't always, I mean, they're not intentionally lying, but they may not respond in a truly honest way to some of these surveys. They might sound good on day one or, but you are surveying their actual.

Heather: Bingo. So it's real behavior. So you might be [00:05:00] scrolling through LinkedIn and you see an ad for this new sustainable beverage, this tablet that you drop into water. If you click on it, That's data. If you don't click on it, that's data, too. If you click on it and go to a landing page and leave an email address so that you learn when we launch, that's really great data.

And so because you're you're seeing that ad because you were in one of several target audiences, and that's the way that we can really create an an empirical way of understanding Who should be targeted, how they should be targeted, where they should be targeted, and so on to, to kind of get that those first customers.

Abigail: So you've worked with a lot of big companies, but you've also worked with small companies. I mean, this seems like it could be very helpful to numerous startups that have been even on this podcast. Recently we had Oliver Charles, which makes those 3d knit sweaters and he was talking [00:06:00]about his demographic.

They were taught, they were targeting people, their age, young professionals that wanted these sweaters. And, and what they found is that they they're very popular in the 50 through baby boomer age group. So it wasn't. It wasn't at all what they expected and, they've had great success, you know, irrespective, but they might've been able to get faster to their goal, to where they are now.

Had

Heather: Yes. I listened to that podcast and one of those sweaters is now on my Christmas list. So,

Abigail: You're in their demographic, Heather.

Heather: a lot older than Oliver, so I'll leave it there.

Abigail: So tell me about the impact you could have with startups by doing this type of advertising based strategy discovery.

Heather: So here's the really hard thing when you're an entrepreneur. You believe that your potential market is vast. That's why you're doing what you're doing, [00:07:00] right? And you probably said that your market is vast to a lot of investors when you were raising money. The problem is that to get off the ground, you really need to find the people who need your product or love your product so much that they're willing to try a brand that they've never heard of before.

That is not vast, right? That's probably a tiny segment. And so how do you find those people? So a lot of people build the product and then look around for the people who really need them. You know, personally, I think it's better to do it the other way around. Start with the marketing on a very small scale and learn as much as you can.

Maybe build a waiting list as you're sort of developing your product. You know, And, you know, the goal here is to find your people, find those early adopters who really need you or who really love your sweaters or whatever it is. And advertising is a great way to do that because you can target a pretty small sample of several audiences and see [00:08:00] which one responds best.

So it's a way of kind of pushing the risk to a different player. place in, in the development cycle. And it's essentially sort of de risking your whole product development process, right? Because you are much more certain about what the market wants when you start to build the product.

Abigail: There seems to be a catch 22 in what you just said. If you're, if you're building a strategy before you have a product, how can you show or talk about the product? To put those ads out to get her get to garner that audience help help us out here

Heather: So I would think of it as you know, really maybe creating. three different strategies for your product, right? So I kind of come back to that concept of a dissolvable beverage tablet, right? That is

Abigail: I'm gonna start that company by the way when i'm done with this podcast. [00:09:00] You've inspired me

Heather: We've got some good creative for you actually. So, but, but listen, the product is essentially in development, right?

You have Let's say research that you can do a yuzu tablet like you know that it's possible to build this product It's not that you're necessarily changing the product You probably even have some samples right and you have a general strategy, which is a sustainable beverage you know, it's got special flavors.

That's unusual. You've already effectively made a number of strategic decisions. Here's the problem. Every product usually consists of lots of attributes, right? Like we just talked about a bunch like, and I can go on about this beverage tablet, right? Like, Hey, you can drop it in your pocket or your purse.

Right? So it's super, like there are. Probably 20, 30 different, very important attributes of that sustainable beverage product. When you launch your product, you have a split [00:10:00] second to communicate your value proposition with people, right? I'm scrolling through Instagram, like what is going to make me stop and look at your ad?

The more you know about that, the more Before you have completely locked on your sustainable beverage product, the better, right, because if the right value proposition is, hey, this is all about sustainability, your packaging might look one way. If instead it's all about these funky flavors, like, you know, yuzu beverage your packaging is probably going to look different.

A different way, right? So I would think of this as a way to validate and refine your existing strategy, which obviously you kind of have to have to even conceive of your, of your product.

Abigail: I think this is really interesting. It's also about getting out of your own way. I think as a lot, you know, here at Happy Planet, [00:11:00] we're talking to lots of entrepreneurs who are really thinking about sustainability and upcycling, recycling. And so it's very easy to think.

That's what the client wants to hear because that's what motivates us. But in truth, you know, people want a delicious beverage and people want a beautiful garment of clothing. You know, people's reaction, you know, people's instincts In the consumer world may, sustainability may just not still be at the top of the list, despite what we hope for.

Yeah.

Heather: And a little bit I mean, kind of getting into the weeds a little bit some of it is figuring out the hierarchy of your messaging, right? Because it could be. Beautiful sweater that looks amazing is the primary positioning, right? The secondary positioning may be, oh, and this is [00:12:00] super sustainable.

That makes it more of a yes able proposition, right? But you don't know that when you launch. So why not test? On a teeny tiny scale, by the way, like we're not talking about spending millions of dollars on an ad campaign, we're talking about spending a few thousand dollars, right? You can test and understand, is it sustainability at the top and beautiful sweater secondary?

Or is it beautiful sweater at the top and sustainability secondary? That sounds sort of trivial, right? Oh, you're just testing copy. But you're not really just testing copy. You are really trying to understand what is the positioning that really resonates with at least one audience and ideally more than one audience.

And so again, think of this as a way of de risking your product, right? Because maybe you find out like, Sustainability is at the top. So my product had better check all the sustainability boxes. It's also a way of kind of de [00:13:00] risking your marketing and your product launch and so on. What if you discover that no one clicks at all, you better scrap your strategy and start over again and rethink your product.

Abigail: Yeah. And that's short money compared to developing the product. So, the same product just marketed differently can have just very different results.

Heather: Absolutely. And I have to say, I always enjoy on LinkedIn. I come across these great posts of people who, I don't know, show some wildly successful product and show its original packaging and brand positioning and so on and how awful it was. And what a difference it can make. I mean, listen, we live in a visual world, right?

We are on our phones all day and we are responding to visual stimuli. There are certain things that appeal to us and others that don't. So the quicker you can figure that out, the earlier you can figure that out the [00:14:00] easier I think it is for you as an entrepreneur to succeed right out of the gate.

Abigail: Yeah. And when you're worried about fundraising and things like that, time is of the essence. You're paying, you're paying salaries and all that time when your message isn't tweaked perfectly. Like, how wide a net do you have to cast for a project like this? How much data gives you good data?

Yeah.

Heather: would think so. The answer, of course, is it depends. And different products obviously have very, very different potential markets. So you know, my general advice is to find yourself at least three audiences. of a fairly substantial size, and by that I mean, let's say you're building these audiences on LinkedIn for a B2B product, I would expect them to be, you know, at least several hundred thousand people in each audience.

If [00:15:00] it's a consumer product and let's say you're building an audience on, on meta, you know, you'd probably want it to be at least a million people in each of your audiences. What's really important though, is to have as little overlap in the audience as you can. One way of thinking about that is if your audience is people who really care about the planet and live in cold places where they need sweaters.

Let's say that is a market of 10 million people. Like think about how you might divide that up into three distinct pieces that don't overlap with each other. Why is that important? Well, because you really want to understand what the drivers of behavior are. And so, you know, if, if one audience consists of people who have those two characteristics we talk about, kind of care about sustainability, like live somewhere cold enough to wear a sweater.

And let's say they also only take public transportation. I'm making this up. Like that [00:16:00] audience is probably going to behave differently than another audience that drives all the time is a big commuter or whatever it is. Or maybe not, that's a kind of weird factor, but in any case, you want to find things that really create distinct segments so that as you are testing, you can see how behavior differs from kind of audience to audience.

The nice part is if you have an audience of, I don't know, 5 million people or a million people, you don't actually have to get that many impressions, ad impressions from that audience to get a statistically valid sample. It's probably in the, you know, thousands or, you know, tens of thousands. Which means you don't have to spend a lot to get statistically valid results.

From an audience to one or more ads.

Abigail: You mentioned B2B. Our first example was B2C, and I must admit most of the people who come on the podcast have, have been so [00:17:00] far B2B . So how does it work if it's a B2B client?

Heather: So it turns out that business people are people too. They click on ads just like consumers. And by the way, Abigail, I have to be honest, if you had asked me that question a couple of years ago, I would have said that our methodology works much, much better in the consumer space than the B2B space. In the past couple of years, we've done a lot more work for B2B clients.

And to my great surprise, we have found that if, if we are you know, testing positioning for a product that really solves a problem for them. They will click, they will go to a landing page. They will want to learn more. They'll sign up to learn when the product is launching. And it is more expensive, of course, than generating, you know interest in the consumer space, but listen, that's [00:18:00] how B2B works usually too, right?

The value of the product that you're selling is usually much, much higher than for a consumer product and the leads therefore are, you know, kind of commensurate commensurate with that. But yes, this methodology definitely works for B2B as well.

Abigail: So I have a I want to know what, what does spark number nine mean? Ha ha ha ha. Ha

Heather: it's funny. I, when I was working in the big companies that I mentioned in the beginning, it was sort of the the moment when the internet was starting to take its toll. On intellectual property based businesses like music and publishing and so on. And so a lot of the work I did in large organizations involved downsizing or rationalizing divisions.

It was a lot of cost cutting. And what I really loved always was growing things. And I [00:19:00]definitely did a little of that in, in my jobs. big companies. But when I left my last big company job, I thought, gosh, I don't know what I want to do next, but it's got to be something to do with growth. And at the time there were not a million companies named spark.

So I was like, spark, that sounds kind of fun and idea driven. And, and, you know, like it has to do with innovation, but of course there were at least a few sparks out there. So I had to differentiate, I couldn't just be spark. And so, you know, I always kind of thought that song Love Potion number nine was, was really kind of a fun song.

So I'm like, I'm just going to add number nine to the end of spark and go with it. Never thinking that I would do anything than just, you know, hang out my own shingle with that name. I ended up creating a company. And so here we are spark number nine.

Abigail: Well, that gets me, segues very well into my next conversation. Cause I want to know more about your [00:20:00] business. . Have you used your own methodology to grow spark number nine and how does that work?

Heather: Really good question. Yes, we have. And in fact, we are just about to embark on some on our own little testing project probably in the new year. 100%. I mean, I will say we are absolutely the cobbler's children who have no shoes. Like it, it's not, you would think we would be testing for ourselves.

I don't. All the time, but listen, our client work always comes first, which means our own stuff often gets put on the back burner, but listen, this whole methodology is you can do it with ads, but you can do it in all kinds of settings, right? So I like to post a lot on LinkedIn. When I put different topics out there, I am still thinking in my head about testing when I write those topics in a certain way, when I frame them in a certain way.

I'm thinking about what [00:21:00] are the drivers here and can I isolate different drivers to see which is more or less successful. So the whole idea of kind of walking through life with like a multivariate test matrix in your head, like it's pretty useful because you're sort of constantly looking for experiments that you can set up.

You're looking for sort of pattern recognition, right? And trying to sort of isolate variables to understand what works and what doesn't. So over time for me, even though, you know, this very much starts in this idea of, you know, using advertising where you have a lot of control over both stimuli as well as respondents in terms of audiences, This, this way of thinking is applicable in all kinds of ways.

Right? And so, yeah, so I think, you know, spark absolutely uses our own methodology, but we also just kind of think this way, really trying to identify. [00:22:00] Cause and effect. What works? What doesn't work? And can we prove it? Do we have empirical evidence?

Abigail: And does it ever happen that you have to retest something because there might be more than one cause? I mean, you've done something one way, but actually the reasons it's they're responding might not be the ones that were in your original assumption. Yeah.

Heather: Abigail, such a good question. You could totally join our team and you're exactly right. Hindsight is sometimes 20, 20. And it is, it does happen occasionally where we thought we had really sort of isolated variables in a very clear way. And so, And we end up looking at a winner and saying, gosh, it actually could have been one of two elements of this particular strategy that drove its success.

We want to know which one, and so we will test again, and we will isolate each of those variables [00:23:00] against a control against the kind of winning strategy to really try to understand, you know, was it a or was it be the way we test, we actually do multiple waves of testing just for this reason. So, usually when we do the first wave of testing, some things work, some things don't. The ones that don't get left by the side of the road for the second wave of testing. And then we really start to drill down on what's working and also expand upon it, right? Like, the goal is to really have a lot of evidence that a strategy works, not just, hey, this ad resonated with this audience.

Like, it, it needs to be bigger than that.

Abigail: Yeah. And what if a startup or even a big company came to you and wanted to, hone their strategy, what kind of timeframe, like how long does it take to gather this type of evidence or sufficient evidence?

Heather: Yeah, great question. So usually we are running a first wave of [00:24:00] testing within a matter of weeks. That said, a lot of the work we do is not just the testing. It's also quite a bit of the strategy development work upfront. You know, I would say a lot of companies have in mind a sort of single strategy, like we are very confident that this is going to work.

Our job is to help them sort of tease out. Multiple strategies and test them side by side. I will tell you, I have never not been surprised by the results of a first wave of testing and our clients often are as well. And, and the goal here in testing is to learn, right? So you really want to test things that are different from each other because that way you learn more.

One of the things we always say at spark number nine is if you only test three shades of blue. You'll never learn that your customer actually wanted green, right? Like, you really need to test broadly enough and distinctively [00:25:00] enough that you learn a lot.

Abigail: You know, get out of our own way.

Heather: Yes, exactly. Yeah, and kind of get out of your own head a little bit. So I'm willing to bet among, you know, most entrepreneurial teams, there are more great ideas than they can pursue, right? Testing is a really cheap way to see, like, Do these ideas have legs? So really kind of forcing yourself, as you say, getting out of your own way and testing alternatives to your strategy.

You can think of it as a backup plan, right? But you might actually discover something really interesting and unexpected that, that, you know, you might not have discovered otherwise until you were well into the market and, you know, burning through your cash.

Abigail: And this could, you know, this could be applied also to upgrades of your product. You might have a few different options for, you know, what comes next back to poor Oliver Charles. You know, maybe, you know, they've got yak and is it seaweed fibers or is [00:26:00] it, you know maybe people want, I don't know Angora, you know, you could, you could start testing all of those sort of smaller decisions.

It sounds brilliant. you have a very unique distinction of having become a Harvard case study, the iconic Harvard case study. I mean, that is, that is just amazing. I saw you right before you were going to Boston to go to the watch it play out at the business school. I want to hear all about it.

Heather: So I went to Harvard Business School and as I always say, that and a buck will get me a cup of coffee. But listen, I love the way that learning happened at HBS. The case study method is just such a powerful way to learn. So when I saw an opportunity to have a case written about our work, I jumped up and made it happen.

And so At the time we had been working with a [00:27:00] client, Consumer Reports, who was developing some new product concepts. They asked us to help them test and validate those concepts. And the case study at HBS is really all about that. And it's interesting because you basically are in the shoes of the protagonist, who is not me, by the way, although I definitely play a role in the case, but it's our client clients really at a consumer reports.

And so it's the cases are written for a bit to learn business, right, about how you make decisions and, and, you know, how you bring evidence to decisions when you can, but they're also sometimes a bit dramatic. And I thought this case in particular, like had a bit of a cliffhanger when it was taught in the class.

And then the professor kind of does the big reveal of like, here's what some additional testing yielded and so on, so that you eventually get to [00:28:00] The answer and I have to say when I first saw it presented, the students were amazing. They were just all over like exactly how to think about decision making, how you bring data to decision making and so on.

So anyway, it was a great experience. And as I say, I think it's a great way to learn, not just about what we do at spark number nine, but really about, you know, how you make decisions in the business world. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Abigail: Right. Because at the end of the day, that's, that's what this is. It's data and decision making.

Heather: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's just really finding a new way to think about how how you get that data. So, you know, I believe focus groups were invented in the 1940s as part of the military surveys were invented sometime earlier, I think in the twenties, maybe you know, really as advertising was starting to Grow as an industry and those tools, focus [00:29:00] groups and surveys, you know, are still kind of the basis of a lot of decision making.

Right? And I think of that as, you know, conventional market research. And it did work, in fact, for many, many decades. But we live in a whole new world now with, you know, everything's digital. And I think the way that we bring research to decision making. Needs to change and listen, this happens all the time.

People run like a B tests, right on landing pages to figure out whether a blue button or a red button is more effective. That's one example of kind of using a digital ecosystem to drive decision making. Very powerful way. You know what we do is same thing. Like we're really sort of focused on how do you take advantage of the digital world we live in to collect empirical data to make better decisions.

Abigail: [00:30:00] Maybe think, do people, you know, thinking about the focus groups and you might actually have a physical product in front of you and you'd comment on it and, and, and, and I was thinking, comparing that in my mind to, to your experience where you have a digital presentation and you click or you don't click.

Do people respond differently in Walmart when they're picking up a product than they would online if they're looking at the same product? Yeah,

Heather: you know, maybe a focus group is to shopping at Walmart as you know, maybe a survey or something like that is to the type of testing we do. But, but you're right. Like I think ideal testing for a physical product would be to put it on the shelf at Walmart, right?

Because what you're seeing is how people behave In a real life environment, when presented with [00:31:00] something new. their eye even notice it on the shelf? Like, maybe it's a new sustainable cereal brand. Or, you know, does their eye go straight to the Captain Crunch? I don't know, but like, right, that's the data you want to have if you're launching that new serial brand.

And you want to have it in a real life setting because asking people in a focus group, they will often tell you what they want to hear, right? They're being paid to be there. It's not really a group. Great way to collect data. I'm a huge fan of behavioral research and I put the work we do in that category.

You know, I think surveys, unfortunately, like you mentioned a few reasons about why they are flawed. I think they are. More flawed in an online setting than they are than they used to be right when people fill them out on paper There's I think plenty of research that's been done about like when you have to like write down something on paper Assign your name to it.

Like you are more likely [00:32:00] to be truthful I think when you're online and you're like, you know cranking through some survey and maybe you're gonna get a few bucks for at the end and Yeah, I don't know if you're thinking quite as hard about your answers and if you are, again, you may be eager to please.

That's why I think that using advertising or content or some other mechanism that is part of the normal flow of our lives online is a much more behavioral, behaviorally driven and accurate way to understand people's preferences.

Abigail: Yeah. Brilliant. So do you think that there are special considerations when finding a strategy that, that these nature forward entrepreneurs need to consider?

Heather: Yes, unfortunately. I mean, we've touched on some of them. And you know, I, I think I mentioned, we do have some experience in both kind of B2C and B2B products in the sustainability [00:33:00] space. So, you know, I think what we have found is kind of what we were talking about with sweaters, right? Like, it's not enough for the sweater to be sustainable for most people.

Probably has to look good and feel nice and, you know maintain easily and so on. So I think that's really the tricky part of you know, maybe using testing or even just Thinking generally about how you kind of launch your nature forward product. So, you know, my general advice is. to make sure that the kind of climate benefit is there, but also to include some other benefit.

And, if you can test or do any kind of research to kind of understand what that other benefit is. Do it because again, it's, I think it's really important to getting more sustainable products out there. I think people want to be sustainable, but it's rarely enough as a value proposition all by itself.

I think this is really true in the [00:34:00] B2B space, right? Where I've got a budget, I got to spend the budget on something that's going to solve my problem. Make it easy for me, like nature forward people, right? Make it easy for me to be climate sensitive. So the goal here is to kind of make your product as yes able as possible.

And so you know, really identifying what's key in the value proposition. And using sustainability as kind of a, a supporting value proposition is what we tend to see work best.

Abigail: That makes a lot of sense. Given, given what I'm seeing, if you had one piece of advice to give to entrepreneurs other than the one you just gave, what would it be?

Heather: I think it's something you actually touched on a little bit. I think you said kind of getting out of your own way. I think of it as open mindedness. I think before I started spark number nine and [00:35:00] did all of this work, I often believed I knew what the right answer was. Now I spend a lot more time thinking I might be wrong.

And so that doesn't mean that I, I don't have a sense of what the right answer is, but knowing that there may be an alternative, there may be a better right answer. I, I think it's a different way of thinking, right? And I think this is hard for entrepreneurs, right? Because, you know, to raise money, oftentimes you have to have fire in your belly.

You have to sound very authoritative. And you know, you have to do that. But I also think keeping an open mind about you know, maybe there is more than one way to bring this to market. And if you can, obviously doing some experiments to, to support that with empirical evidence really, really important.

Abigail: Yeah. And while you are not specifically a Nature Forward company, I know you are very concerned about [00:36:00] our nature and the, the, the, the path we are on right now. So I've, I asked this to everybody, are you optimistic about where you think we are in this sort of race against climate change?

Hmm.

Heather: than I was in say October. However I am an optimist. by nature. And, you know, here's one thing that's really interesting. If you look at some of the projections for what, a lot of this is about energy, right? And if you look at some of the projections for what people think would, would happen with, let's say solar, they have been wrong about the growth curve.

Like. Really terribly wrong over and over and over like solar has surpassed expectations by like, by like an order of magnitude, like it's not just a little bit which, which I think is so interesting. So I like to think here's my little bit of [00:37:00] optimism that As geopolitical events perhaps make energy prices more volatile, particularly fossil fuel prices, people will turn increasingly to sources like wind and solar because you know what?

Like once you got your solar thing set up, the sun is not increasing prices, right? There's no inflation from solar. Sun and wind and so on. So as I sort of think about, you know, volatility in what is a huge portion of cost for many businesses in particular energy, like I hope that people will start seeing you know, alternative energy sources as a smart move, right?

Because it basically helps you manage volatility. So

Abigail: What I love about this podcast is I get to speak to so many entrepreneurs like yourself and entrepreneurs are [00:38:00] by nature, optimists. You couldn't be an entrepreneur without being optimistic. I think that's really smart. Well thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, this has been an incredible education in strategic thinking and strategic planning and I'm sure this is going to be of great interest to the followers of Happy Planet.

Heather: This has been a real pleasure. I love talking about this stuff, especially with you, Abigail.

Abigail: This has been another episode of Happy Planet. all the information you need on Heather and her business can be found in our show notes. 

Thank you once again for listening. Please follow Happy Planet wherever you tune in and leave us a rating and review. Happy Planet was reported and hosted by me, Abigail Carroll.

I am also the executive producer. Composer George Brandl Eggloff created our theme music. Learn more about my work and get in touch by visiting happyplanetpodcast. com. Dot com.​[00:39:00]