SFG: Okay, okay. Well, what if you are someone in the middle, right? Do you -- if you’re 40 years old and you’ve been in middle management your whole life, do you just make that –

PB: Okay. Well, you look to -- first of all, my advice to people when they call and they’re calling in increasing numbers. It kind of gets to the point where we can’t even answer them, but fortunately with an email at least you can put them on a wait list.

One, decide where you want to go, because solar is not like wind and it’s not like -- that’s not like biofuels or biomass, etcetera. They’re different industries.

You know, they may be able to call themselves renewable, but they’re still very different industries. So make up your mind. You have to focus because developing a campaign for one industry won’t necessarily help you in the next other industry.

So if you’re going for solar, say, then find out about the industry. The more you can talk the language, know what all the acronyms stand for, and how it is produced and how its cost is justified in what the payback is, the more you can talk the language of the company. And even if you haven’t got the experience, they recognize your knowledge base and you stand more chance of getting an entry. The higher up the tree you go from the bottom all the way through, not just at the top end, the more important networking is.

The best example I can give is say an executive from an existing solar company, he leaves it. But the solar company is not that big, so most solar companies know about the executives in other companies.

And if one becomes available or even a sales manager or salesman, one becomes available, they know. They have an opinion of him because they’ve seen him in shows and they’ve seen his work and they just either want him or they don’t. If he’s any good, he’s marketable.

He’ll be snapped up quickly. And it’s the same for people who are trying to get a promotion in this industry. If they know your face and know your name and recognize you from the past, you’ve got a lot more chance than somebody who they've never heard of.

SFG: How do you –

PB: You may have exactly the same credentials. How do you do that?

SFG: Yeah, if you’re not going –

PB: It depends where you are. If you say you’re up where we are in the Bay Area, Northern California. My advice is join the Northern California Solar Energy Association, so that’s a chapter of the American Solar Energy Association. But it’s much lower key. It’s much cheaper to join.

SFG: Than the national?

PB: Than the national one. It meets more regularly and it’s much more informal. When I say low key, I mean informal. And so, you know, it don’t cost you that much. It’ll cost you time, but you get to meet people who actually are in the industry, you know, the members that most of them at least are already in the industry.

They’re working in it at all levels. And you’ve got a chance to volunteer there. You’ve got chances to find out what’s going on and who’s important and who’s not important, what opportunities are for training, you know, and lots of different things. There are some guys here who run training on how to run a solar sales operation, how to justify the cost of solar, all that kind of stuff.

And so that’s not degree courses. That’s on the job training, vocational training.