Starting and Scaling a Values-Based Company: Dara Bortman

Show Notes:

Dara Bortman is a Returned Peace Corps Response Volunteer and former co-owner and Senior VP of Marketing & Sales at Exact Solar.

Over 15 years, she helped grow Exact Solar into one of the most respected solar installers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, building a company culture rooted in honesty and advocacy.

Here’s her LinkedIn.

Expect to learn:

* How Exact Solar grew from a single (almost accidental) pool heating project into a values-driven regional leader.

* Why honesty and education are the most effective sales tools for a solar company.

* How advocacy and community impact projects can become powerful marketing engines for any home service business.

You can listen to this episode here, or on:

* YouTube

* Apple Podcasts

* Spotify

Transcript:

Aaron Nichols:Hello everyone, and welcome back to This Week in Solar. I'm your host, Aaron Nichols, the Research and Policy Specialist here at Exact Solar in Newtown, Pennsylvania.

And today, as you can see, I'm across the table from someone. Someone not on Zoom, because I am in Boulder, Colorado for Solar 2025.

And we've got a very special guest. This is Dara Bortman, the one who started it all. One of the ones.

Dara Bortman:One of the ones who started it all. That's right.

Aaron Nichols:Yeah, you were part of a dynamic duo.

Dara Bortman:That's right. Yeah.

Aaron Nichols:Yeah.

Dara Bortman:Mark and I.

Aaron Nichols:Yeah. Yeah. Dara is one of the co-founders of Exact Solar, you know. And I have been doing this little interview series to talk to veterans in the industry about where we think solar is going to go, what's going to happen now that the Inflation Reduction Act's been repealed.

But I think a good place to start with this conversation would be to talk about the superhero origin story of Exact Solar.

Dara Bortman:Okay. We can do that. So, back in the olden days. I can't believe how long it's been. I guess it was back in 2005 or so.

Aaron Nichols:I was 12.

Dara Bortman:Oh my God, please. Yeah, yeah. I had children already. Anyway, so, Mark and I had always been interested in renewable energy, clean energy, and energy efficiency.

We actually took a class in Pennsylvania from Johnny Weiss.

Aaron Nichols:Okay. I've heard the name before. I've never, I never got to meet him.

Dara Bortman:Yeah. He was amazing. And he just passed away recently from cancer, unfortunately. Mark and I had always been interested in renewable energy, energy efficiency, but it was back pre-solar times.

So, American pre-solar times — meaning mostly that it was pre-tax incentives for solar.

Aaron Nichols:Right. So, both at the federal level and the state level, right?

Dara Bortman:Yeah, I think 2005 was the first one, if I remember right. It was around there, 2005 to 2008. In that area were the first East Coast state incentives, and also the federal tax credit, I think, started in ’08 or ’09.

Right. So, back in the early days, we actually took a class in Pennsylvania from the great Johnny Weiss about energy efficiency and renewable energy at the time, and we both took online classes, and we realized that, yeah, we weren't doing any work related to it, but it was something we'd always been interested in.

We decided at the time to pick up our family and move to Costa Rica.

Aaron Nichols:Amazing.

Dara Bortman:So, at the time we had a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old.

We'd never been to Costa Rica. Picked up the phone, we're like, okay, we're going to move there, on the map, and, you know—

Aaron Nichols:So, long before Costa Rica was cool.

Dara Bortman:Long before Costa Rica was cool, but it was a democratic country, it was safe, good medical.

Aaron Nichols:Right.

Dara Bortman:All that stuff. So, we decided we wanted our children to see that not everyone in the world got to live in a big house in suburban Pennsylvania like they did.

Aaron Nichols:Totally.

Dara Bortman:We wanted them to see that not everyone in the world speaks English, right?

Aaron Nichols:Yeah.

Dara Bortman:The type