[music playing] My name is Terry Tomei.

I'm the owner and CEO of PozitivEnergy.

We're a solar panel installation company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

My journey actually took me out west into Portland, Oregon.

I was recruited to play in a band.

And I did that for a couple of years.

Really big into music personally, and I loved to play, but I was ready for a career change.

Solar is inherently democratic.

The sun shines everywhere equally.

It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor.

So we can harvest that energy now and monetize it.

I'd like to keep it as a working class thing that anyone can have, not a luxury commodity.

Currently, our company has nine employees.

We are a crew of five installers that are on site doing residential rooftop solar panel installations every day.

We have two guys here in the office doing admin and two guys out doing sales.

My company, we work four 10-hour days, so we have three day weekends and that's great.

So 6:30 to 4:30 is a typical day.

Come into the office here, check in with the crew.

Their day on site is 8 to 4, so that they can get back here with a little time to clean up, unload the truck, and on to the next day.

A typical install takes just one day for a team of five specialists.

They're all boom, boom, boom, typewriter fashion, right down the line.

Larger projects take longer to execute.

And we're on a project right now that we expect to take all week.

So that happens and we have to plan for that, especially if there's travel time or electrical trench and all kinds of things that come up in our scope of work.

I typically work in the office here doing administrative work, lots of phone calls and emails.

I do get out of the office and into the field to do work with my hands as well.

I'm fortunate to have a very talented team, so everything I can do, they can do as well.

My background in education was a general communications degree from Penn State.

I also double majored in International Studies.

Neither of those are exactly relevant to what I'm doing today, except for maybe my background in sales.

Solar is specific in a lot of ways, and there are courses available to supplement any general education.

Penn State has a graduate program that they have online.

I did a lot of my classes online as well but through an outfit called SEI, Solar Energy International, that's specialized for solar.

Throughout the state of Pennsylvania, we'll be seeing more solar panels on roofs.

They just keep popping up everywhere.

And it makes people ask, well, why did they get it?

Should I get it?

And it's a question that will be asked continually.

Does solar work for me?

And so it's a lot of on-site analysis regarding the roof orientation, shade, characteristics of the property.

But generally speaking, as these utility bills keep going up, solar becomes a better investment.

And the price of the equipment keeps coming down too.

So as those factors all merge, we're seeing adoption for solar increase.

The biggest rewards for me are the feeling of doing something that is meaningful.

And I like solar because it's empowering.

In a lot of ways I think what I do is just a drop in the bucket, but at least my energy is going in the right direction.

So that's why I call my company PozitivEnergy.

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