Dustin Van Orman
speaker
125 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Dustin Van Orman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Right now, approximately 500 million. Jesus Christ. That's awesome.
It's been fun. 500 million among 30 locations you've been? That's awesome. Correct. That's great. Cool. Very good, man. So both incredible backgrounds. Both have been growing it. Hey, guys. It's Chris. Hey, a lot of you leave comments asking for help. Do me a real quick favor. Shoot me a text at 509-374-7554. That's 509-374-7554. Shoot me a text. I'll answer and help you with whatever you need.
Don't worry. I got you back. Let's go back to the show, baby. It's interesting. It brings up the question like why? Why is private equity involved in the trades right now? Because, you know, historically they're going waves with different industries, different businesses. Why is it so appealing right now?
You mentioned pandemic proof. I mean, you look at what happened. Private equity was interested in our trades before the pandemic hit. But then what happened when they saw how it affected us? I mean, we were an essential service. We didn't shut down. In fact, all of us grew like crazy if we had our stuff together. Right. Of course. They saw how well we handled that crisis in the entire world.
It was a worldwide crisis. And the trades came through like just fantastic. And that's that's appealing.
Well, it's just become so, so expensive to be a publicly traded company these days. And the amount of return that you can get in private equity versus publicly traded companies is just drastically different. And, you know, you mentioned and alluded to it like
We are in the AI era, and when you're analyzing businesses of what is AI going to replace, really the trades is going to be one of the very last type of any type of industry that's going to be replaced by artificial intelligence and robotics, right? Like for a robot to show up to somebody's home to analyze the situation and customize an approach, like that just seems so far-fetched versus...
versus like, you know, just an arm that's replacing and doing a task over and over again in a manufacturing facility. And so, you know, you look at these, these software companies that have traditionally taken a lot of money from private equity and whatnot. Those things are being, I mean, you got softwares being written in three days through artificial intelligence.
You just got like, I mean, the ability to replicate most businesses is, is just, like crazy. And so I think that's where the blue collar work really shines through.
And yet somehow the government still broke. i know it's sad do you feel like do you feel like taxing all your people 13 on the top oh my gosh it's trust me do you feel like that keeps people out of the market because of the bear of entry i think i think it brings out the best in people too so it does keep a
Right? You know, it's interesting. These barriers of entry, I think, create tons of value, a ton of opportunity because, yeah, most guys aren't willing to go through any type of barrier of entry. That's really what made us successful in building a solar company out of Washington State.
For anybody that's ever looked in the solar industry, typically it's going to be around where the sunniest places with the highest electric rates. I mean, we're talking about Seattle, which is not the sunniest, and the lowest cost energy in the United States. And that's where we chose to establish our business, where literally everybody else was taking the low-hanging fruit and working up.
We took the highest hanging fruit and worked down. That's dope, man. And because of it, we established ourselves in a way that was just completely different. Having these different regulations. You know, Washington State's just as crazy as California when it comes to regulation, right? Like electrical regulation, you got to have, you can only have two apprentices per journeyman.
You know, like... See, that I can't deal with, bro.
Yeah, I mean, we have literally the craziest electrical licensing standard in the U.S. Jesus. But because of it, it kept everyone else out, right? And if we could be compliant and learn how to be compliant, right, learn how to play within the rules of the game, that ultimately allowed us to dominate, right? And that's really the key to this whole thing is, like, what are the rules?
Can I create any additional rules?
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, we got a big shift in our educational system that has to take place. I mean, you think about it, right? Like, AI is banned in schools right now. Like, you can't even use ChadGBT to write a paper or do anything because it's cheating. Like, I mean, that's where we're at, where we need to completely...
completely shift and like understand what AI is going to impact, get people more into the trades, understand that like blue collar work is respectable. You can make a good living, all these different things. And so, yeah, it's a big shift that we have to make. And I agree with you.
We'll bleep it out for you. We're a clean show, but you know.
Showing 21–40 of 125 · page 2 of 7
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