Johnny Fine: The Truth About America's Fragile Energy System

21:09Darin Olien:But the challenge, too, and the last I've heard is like for, you know, California, again, the legislation favors the monopoly. So like, is it still legally required? So if I have a solar panel over here, I'm legally required to tie it to the grid. And then it basically gives my power back, which makes no sense to me. Like if you have power and you're generating, you should be able to directly feed that power to your home. Does that still exist where you have a little gray zone where you have to keep yourself tied to the grid? One of the biggest questions I get constantly is, Darren, where can I find the best non-toxic cookware?

22:00Darin Olien:Listen, I don't mess around with things that go ultimately in my body. And that includes what I cook with. That's why I swear by Our Place. Because from day one, they've been committed to making clean, healthy, non-toxic cookware and kitchenware. No sketchy coatings, no forever chemicals, just pure conscious design that are beautiful as well as highly functional. I've been using their titanium always pan for months now. It's the only pan I cook with and here's why. Pure titanium, non-toxic, PFAS free. Extremely durable, metal utensils, high heat, dishwasher safe. This thing can handle it all. All in one performance.

22:55Darin Olien:The best stainless steel cast iron nonstick in a single pan. And here's the real kicker. Most nonstick pans, they're still loaded with PFAS. These forever chemicals that break down in your body and stay in your body. And they accumulate over time. We just don't need that. They disrupt the gut microbiome, testosterone, dysregulation, metabolic issues, hormone imbalances, immune dysfunction, and chronic inflammation they contribute to.

23:26Johnny Graham:Think about it.

23:26Darin Olien:Every time you cook, you could be introducing toxins into your body. And the simple act of switching to safe cookware eliminates that. This is why it's the easiest, most powerful change you can make, certainly in your kitchen, for long-term health and the elimination of toxic exposure.

23:47Johnny Graham:So Our Place is having their biggest sale of the year.

23:52Darin Olien:35 % all site-wide products through January 12th. So head over to fromourplace.com forward slash Darren and see why over a million people have made the switch to Our Place Kitchenware. And with their 100-day risk-free trial, free returns, and free shipping, you can shop with confidence. So Our Place holiday sale is going on right now with no discount code necessary. I have friends who have solar panels and the grid goes down, they're down. Right.

24:29Johnny Graham:Even though they have freaking solar panels, which is insane to me. Sure. Yeah. Well, I'm really glad you brought that up because there was a logic to it at the time. So at the time when solar was allowed for people to be able to have their own systems, that was at a time in which the utility was in super high demand because it used to be where the utility was a vertically integrated monopoly, where they owned the power stations and they owned the transmission lines. But in 2003, that was broken up. They said, hey, you can't own the power generation station and the transmission lines. And so the incentive switched for the utilities, right?

25:03Johnny Graham:The utilities have now essentially become construction companies where they want that power generation source to be as far away from where it's being used as possible so that they can build long transmission lines. Because the more lines that they make, they have a guaranteed profit, you know, about 10 percent. Every line that they're burying or transmitting. So the incentive switched and we ran into a power shortage. And so the utility said, hey, if you're making that extra power, we want it to go back through the meter. Because solar systems generally produce a lot more power during the day than you actually use.

25:32Johnny Graham:So that extra power would travel a few feet over to the home nearby and they would consume it. But there was something really important there that you said. You said, hey, I got friends that they have solar panels and the power goes out and they're out of power too. And that is an issue. That's why we need batteries in these situations. Because what we can do is you can temporarily isolate your system from the rest of the grid with our technology. and allow that large power surge that's flowing through the lines that's dangerous to basically just ground out not even go into your home right but the utilities in 2023 did something devastating to the solar industry before somebody used to put a power kilowatt back on the grid and they would get a billing credit for that generally about 25 cents and now the utilities are charging as high as 40 sometimes even 50 cents but when you put that kilowatt back on the grid as of 2023 it's now only five cents and so there are some groups right now like the ewg the environmental works group they're actually suing the california public utility commission going hey how come you're putting that power 10 feet away giving the consumer five cents and then charging 50 cents over here that doesn't make any that doesn't that doesn't add up right so that's currently something that we're battling now but the good news is is that when that happened every single solar company drummed up all of their efforts to get together the supply chain to actually provide batteries on every one of our projects.

26:49Johnny Graham:So now when those homes lose power, as long as they have solar plus a battery, they still have electricity operational. But solar panels on their own aren't going to provide you backup electricity because you need to be able to control the flow in and out of the home.

27:00Darin Olien:So legally, if I have solar and batteries, I can pull myself off of the connected grid.

27:08Johnny Graham:I wish, I wish. Now, they still control that. Now, they still control that. Unless you built a home that was never had a power line laid in it, which good luck getting through the permits on that. But unless you built a home where you were completely off grid, we are still at the mercy of the utility. And that's it's an unfortunate element. But we can still isolate our systems. You can do it yourself right now. You can go into your into your house and your garage and go to your breaker box and flip the whole thing off. And now you're technically no longer attached to the grid. Right. But now you don't have a power source and a battery.

27:35Johnny Graham:So that's why we focus on this. But if I did have a totally source and a battery. Yeah, you could flip it off. Yeah.

27:41Darin Olien:Yeah.

27:41Johnny Graham:Yeah. But they're still going to charge you. Right. They they they they're doing minimum monthly connection fees to stay connected.

27:47Darin Olien:I'm wondering if you connected yourself, got the permit, and disconnected. Yeah.

27:54Johnny Graham:So just to kind of help understand the logic behind why with solar alone the power still goes out is because sometimes you have line workers that are working on these power lines, right, when a power outage goes out. And it can be dangerous if your solar system is producing power back onto the grid and they're working on that power line. It can hurt a lineman, right? Sure. So that is the logic behind why these things are tied to each other. but building off grid i'm always a huge fan of you know it's just it's getting the permits to do it because most of your local permitting teams are are pretty well in the pockets of the utilities

28:23Darin Olien:too yeah and that's i mean again it goes against the the that sovereignty element of course you know and it logically it makes no sense and i immediately go to well they they want their money and they want to keep the legacy of their system in play. And, you know, I have on my property, I have, you know, these ridiculous lines. So you got, you got other issues with that. You have lines going across, you know, places where it's going to cause a fire. Happens all the time. You know, and it, you know, the, you know, I, you know, Woolsey fire that burned my property, the ground and that's the other thing that's a whole another side of the things that most of the fires that are happening in california the genesis of those are not natural lightning strikes or

29:18Johnny Graham:something they're unkept power line most of the time yeah up in the trees yeah yeah yeah and what's so sad about that is you'll have these utilities get sued for starting these fires right and then they pay out settlements and then they just raise the utility costs on everybody again to help cover those settlements. So the ultimate person that pays for it is every end user. These guys walk away with, we saw record breaking shutdowns of people's power for non-payment last year, but some of the record setting profits made by these utilities. I mean, you're talking, I'm not going to name names, but some of these utility owners are taking home$27 million in compensation a year, which I'm all for capitalists making money, but not when you're a monopoly, not when you're not paid to innovate, right?

29:57Johnny Graham:When you're paid to regulate, that's a big issue.

29:59Darin Olien:Yeah, because it still is monopolies, even though Northern California has their PG &E and you've got the Edison down here.

30:08Johnny Graham:And there's no other option. Right, yeah. And that is not the case in all states, by the way. In Texas, for example, where I just was, they have what's called a deregulated utility. And so at some level, you can actually change your provider. You have two-year agreements with different providers. And that keeps the cost of power a lot lower. And even here in California, we have LADWP, which isn't a part of those big three monopolies. It's owned by the city, right? Their power costs almost 50 % less than if once you're in Edison. And so it's a real challenge because when you basically make it where somebody either has to pay the electric bill or go without power, go to Amish, or they have to move.

30:45Johnny Graham:Those are their three options. And it puts people in an unfair position.

30:49Darin Olien:I mean, Amish, they got a lot of things sorted out. Right. Sure. Yeah, of course they do. Yeah. Better food. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's for sure. We actually interviewed some. They couldn't be on camera, and we interviewed a bunch. And it's just fascinating because their worldview is completely different. Of course. And it also is, again, not to hit the word again, but that sovereignty is their thing. And so let's dig into the pluses and minuses of solar itself, right? because there are some, even though prices are going down, there's still mining, there's battery issues, battery tech is improving, and there's different types from lithium ion to graphene hasn't quite scaled yet, but there's a bunch of stuff going on with that.

31:39Darin Olien:So the pluses and minuses of, and most of the solar panels, are they still coming from China?

31:45Johnny Graham:No, a lot of that's changed, actually. With the tariffs from the first Trump administration, and it should have never happened to begin with. Let's just be really clear that some of the best solar technology actually came here out of California. And the reason why everybody, whether you live in California or not, should pay attention to what's happening here is because within five to ten years, it's happening in your state next. California is the trend-setting state both with culture and legislation.

32:07Darin Olien:It's so large, that's where it's going to move.

32:11Johnny Graham:And these other utility companies around the country, they watch what California's big utilities do and they copy their playbooks. And so this is the state that sets a trend. So if you don't live here, I promise, whatever's happening here is coming to a state near you within 10 years, right? But going back to your question about the different technologies, PV solar used to be made a lot of the times in the United States. A lot of it came out of San Jose, some of the first technology for that in the 80s. And then, unfortunately, China took an approach with this where they said, hey, we could actually flood the world market with cheap solar panels and make it impossible for domestic manufacturing to happen in these Western countries.

32:48Johnny Graham:And that's what they did. They flooded the market. Yeah. And it caused the local manufacturing plants here in the United States to not be able to compete. I mean, when you're dealing with borderline slave labor, I mean, how do you compete with that here in the US? And so a lot of those solar companies that used to make their equipment domestically shuttered their doors. A change happened, though during the trump administration the first round when they issue tariffs against solar panels made abroad and we have now large plants like q cell for example out of the state of georgia that have moved their manufacturing from abroad and brought it on shore and so every one of our projects has to have a certain amount of what's called domestic content or materials that are made here in the united states and so it's uh it's it's the the manufacturing process is finally making its way back to the u.s it employs tons of jobs especially for electricians and so we hope to keep seeing that happen because from a national security standpoint we should be making our own solar panels here there should no question about that yeah so i mean not to go off on this but

33:44Darin Olien:certain you know tariffs in general although can cause issues in a lot of different ways it can be beneficial in many ways there are ways that it does yeah when you make it cost prohibitive to

33:57Johnny Graham:buy across you know from another country and you make it available here it allows people here in the united states to be able to compete with us yeah and we don't and we shouldn't have to tell the American worker who has a higher cost of living that they have to live on third world wages to be able to manufacture things here in the United States. We need to bring as much manufacturing here as we can. Right.

34:15Darin Olien:So in terms of, so you're really seeing solar being effective, both cost. Oh yeah. And that's only important.

34:25Johnny Graham:Can I actually explain why rooftop solar specifically is more effective? So there's, there's a lot of experimental solar programs that exist out there that you see in those large fields. I don't know if you've seen those, those big towers on your way to vegas with those big solar farms yeah so those aren't photovoltaic solars those are basically just mirrors that are shooting a light back at the water tower and heating the water creating steam and spinning a turbine right right that's all very experimental technology but the reason why solar is so much more cost effective is transmission so you get something called resistance and power lines so if i make 10 kilowatts over here at a power plant several hundred miles away and i want to push it through transmission stations distribution distribution by the time it makes it to it's there's a there's loss right the reason why photovoltaic is so revolutionary is because we can power this entire building with a power plant right up on the roof a few feet away and we don't have all that transmission loss right and so that's where the cost is so much more effective is we're making it where it's being used and and it's so easy for us to people are surprised all the time we go to their buildings they give us this huge electric cost and we show them how many panels it takes to produce the power and they're shocked They're like, what?

35:31Johnny Graham:I mean, most of our panels are producing 440, 450 watts per panel, where even 20 years ago, it was half that. And so we're seeing a massive change in this. And those panels are made of silica, which is just sand. So it's a very robust availability. And the battery chemistry is always getting better. We've seen a flood of engineers go into the battery sector, making batteries from nickel, cobalt, silicon as well. And that's been largely driven to by the EV market because the same battery chemistry that we see in electric vehicles is the same stuff that we're using when we're putting them on these homes.

36:02Darin Olien:Yeah, I mean, what's your thoughts on the loss of, and it's really bad in terms of the recapitulation of bad batteries. And I just met a company in Austria that's taking batteries that are done and then recycling. And we really have to push towards that or else it's like with everything. We're just out of sight, out of mind, and we shove it away. But that's a system that really needs to be implemented.

36:41Johnny Graham:Oh, I completely agree. And, I mean, batteries typically, they're a little bit different than your panels in their lifespines, right? And these are getting better, right? But the solar industry has gone through so much revolution on the panel side that we're kind of at like the flat screen part of the curve where everybody now has a flat screen TV in their house and it's really cheap, right? Where the panels aren't going to go through much more evolution. It's the batteries where most of the focus is happening. And Tesla Powerwalls have been proven to be very effective. They last a long time with minimal damage or problems.

37:11Johnny Graham:But a lot of the materials that these are made from, people think that it has to come from some coal mine in Africa. That's just not the case. We can make these batteries out of all sorts of forms of chemistry with materials that are readily available. And if we could make on-shoring of recycling of these batteries more cost-effective, that would be a huge victory. because it just means less mining, more jobs here on shore, and more availability to be able to swap those batteries out when they're needed because the lifespan of a panel right now is about 40 years, sometimes even 50 years depending on the right weather condition.

37:42Johnny Graham:Batteries, on the other hand, though, they're about 17 years. So that means that you would have to replace your battery system out about one time before you would ever have to replace out your panels. Which is not terrible.

37:55Darin Olien:It's better than I originally thought.

37:57Johnny Graham:Yeah.

37:58Darin Olien:But, you know, and then there's the other side of, you know, they're only good. They're only good. The solar panels are only good when there's sun.

38:06Johnny Graham:Right.

38:07Darin Olien:Right. And nothing works when the sun's down, especially now that we had daylight savings time. Right. And listen, just a caveat.

38:18Johnny Graham:Do you think that's a psyop to like bring us down a little bit? I sometimes wonder about it. I hate that. I hate that. Me too. I just, I do.

38:25Darin Olien:What are we doing that for? Right. That was basically farmer's almanac shit that basically trying to get more out of working and stuff. But I don't know why we're doing that. And there's also all this physiological and psychological research around that.

38:44Johnny Graham:Oh, yeah. Depression, heart attacks increase, all sorts of things.

38:47Darin Olien:So what are we doing that for? I don't know.

38:49Johnny Graham:It seems archaic.

38:50Darin Olien:Yeah. So I'll have to do a solo deep dive on that and figure out what the hell is going on there. It would probably be quite juicy. It's always interesting when you dig into something. Of course. And start to find. So in terms of that, what's your backup systems and what's your plans when if we have a lot of rain, if we don't have as much sun, what's your strategy around optimizing?

39:25Johnny Graham:So that is a big question that people often wonder like hey, what about these cloudy days and Germany actually has the highest level of solar adoption in the world like on a per capita basis They have a ton of solar deployed and they're a lot cloudier of a region that we are here And so most of the Sun Belt most of the United States It has plenty of Sun and these panels work pretty well even in cloudy weather It's just a matter of not isolating the individual piece of technology, right? We can get into the efficacy of steering wheels and then the efficacy of airbags, but you need to combine the two.

39:57Johnny Graham:You need to have both of them. How safe is a steering wheel? It's not that safe without an airbag. We need those two together. And there's no difference in solar. You need to have solar plus a backup battery. Those two things go together well in case we do have extremely cloudy weather for a really long time. That can affect the solar production minorly. The biggest thing that affects them actually is ashes from wildfires. That really affects them. And so if you can get out there and just spray it off with the hose, it's not that big of a deal. These things are mostly bulletproof. And because Texas has been a major adopter of solar, most of our panels now are pretty much hailproof entirely.

40:29Johnny Graham:They can handle a ton of hail damage. And we don't really deal with too much hail here in California, but we get a ton of sunny weather here. And most of the United States gets enough sunny weather to be able to produce it.

40:39Darin Olien:You know, the other bummer, because my place is all solar right now. And I'll have some other alternative energy sources, a little bit of what we talked about before. But I'll always have solar. I'll have a degree of solar on my property. The thing that was shocking to me, when solar panels get really hot, they also plummet in their efficiencies. So when it's 100 degrees, it's as if it's a cloudy day. Right.

41:11Johnny Graham:Like I lose gosh probably 50 % of the power. So what is your power? Is it made on your rooftop or is it made offside?

41:21Darin Olien:It's very close. So I'm not up. It's just like so my home is here and then it's just off of the side of the hill. So it's maybe I don't know 100, 150 feet away. Okay. Are your lines buried that run to the electric box? Good. Yeah. Yeah. But I notice it a lot, especially when you have the need increases. So you get the 100 degrees and then you're blasting the AC. And I push myself as much as I can. I'm like, OK, it's uncomfortable in here. I'm turning on the AC. But I do see it drop off quite a bit. And I, you know, aside from having a cooling system, what are some of the things that, and maybe my solar panels are old.

42:10Johnny Graham:How long ago did you get them, actually? I was going to be my next question.

42:13Darin Olien:It's been seven years. Okay.

42:16Johnny Graham:So they're not too old. Are they like the bluish tinted ones or are they jet black? They're black. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, so we've seen some of that happen. That happens across the board, too, even when the power lines, is it creates a lot of extra emission that comes off of them. In the last couple of years, though, we've been really able to address this pretty effectively with monocrystalline panels. So polycrystalline, that tends to happen very frequently. And they tend to have a little bit of a shorter lifespan. But in about the last three years, most of our panel efficiencies have gone up during those time periods.

42:47Johnny Graham:So it's a type of solar panel I have.

42:49Darin Olien:It's a type of panel.

42:50Johnny Graham:Yeah. And luckily, the cost of replacing them nowadays is dirt cheap. It used to be really expensive. And so I spent a lot of my career replacing out older systems. That's very common. And so general Qcell 440 watt panels today, phenomenal. Even in hot weather, they do really well. Texas helped us with this a lot because Texas has such an extreme level of variance in weather that we were also running into that same problem. Also, the less distance you have in any of your lines, that's another big difference. That's why I asked about what the distance was because the closer again to where it's made, the less efficiency you lose.

43:24Johnny Graham:Right.

43:24Darin Olien:Before we continue the pod, I want to share something. I've tried so many supplements. I've been in the space for 25 years. And every so often, something really pops out. Mana Vitality is that difference. It's not just about adding minerals. It's about tuning your body to the higher frequency, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Because this is the mana from the earth. The Shilajit, the Ormus minerals, and so on. There's so much going on with this brand. I'm so excited beyond the SheLegit, they're expanding into other elementals. The brand is built on ancient alchemy with ingredients like gold nanoparticles, beta-glucans, SheLegit, Ormus, all geared to elevate you, especially in today's world.

44:17Darin Olien:You need bioavailable, a bio-delivery system that upgrades your body from the inside out. Every formula is frequency charged to promote balanced energy immune system and cellular renewal. And the wild part, the more consistently you take it, the more you feel everything in your body. It's the same with me. The more I use it, the better I feel. My sleep improved. My skin glows. My stress goes down. my testosterone goes off, it's like my whole system is humming again. So if you're tired of low energy, brain fog, and or just not feeling the same and like something's missing, check out Mana. Go to manavitality.com.

45:05Darin Olien:That's M-A-N-N-A vitality.com. Use the code Darren20 and you get 20 % off your order. This isn't about health. It's about living in harmony with your greatest and highest potential. What's your overall driver? What's your overall plan? Obviously, to get people as many efficiencies as possible, but for you, where do you see the future going?

45:36Johnny Graham:Yeah. Well, I would say that some of it is a political motivation, not to get into politics, but I'm a consumerist through and through. I believe the consumer should have the best options. And I am deeply frustrated at how our utilities have turned a blind eye to our vulnerabilities in favor of profit. And I want to see our country do better. I want to see us have our own power sources. I mean, when I'm dealing with a single mother that has working two jobs and she's looking at me going, I have this electric bill that is the equivalent of a car payment. I am putting off my mortgage to pay this because they'll shut my power off and that's just not an option.

46:11Johnny Graham:And we're able to cut her utility cost in half. And we're able to do that through something that's quite a revolutionary piece of technology. That's my major driver is I look at our grid vulnerabilities and I'm asking myself, hey, is this a future we want? Do we want to be caught off guard with one of these events? I mean, one of many events, right? Our utilities under constant attack by hackers trying to get into it by pernicious AIs. And this is all like unless we were all Amish, which I agree with you, they've got they're on to something for sure. but unless our society became completely Amish, we need to address this problem head on.

46:44Johnny Graham:It is our power source is the most vulnerable Achilles heel that and maybe our currency are the two major Achilles heels to our country. And so I would like to be able to encourage as many people as I can to take some level of self-sufficiency, right? You are the consumer. You have more power than you think. Don't just pay your utility bill blindly. Ask yourself, where's my money going? Don't just buy food at the grocery store blindly. You know, there's plenty of, there's a Yucca app you can download and you just scan it and see what's in that. Right. And so we can help address a lot of our health problems, a lot of our issues with systems that we're frustrated with, less at the ballot box and more at the, at the checkout stand.

47:20Johnny Graham:Right. Right. Our money has big power. And so every time one of these homeowners or businesses go solar, the average homeowner is taking about six figures away from those utility bills over the course of 25 years. And so that's, it's not only, that's money that can end up in their life, right? That's money they can spend on education, everything.

47:36Darin Olien:So that's happening right now. Yes. For the most part throughout the United States, you think if someone could adopt the right system today, they would be

47:45Johnny Graham:saving money. Of course. Well, I do it every single day. I mean, we save, I mean, my company is in three states. We're in California, Texas, and Florida. And every project we do, I mean, this is without fail. It's a six-figure savings for a homeowner over the course of 25 years, every single time. Our own utilities in the last 10 years have doubled in cost here in our own state. And so it's kind of like being a frog, right? We're just getting that temperature turned up on us, a boiling frog. And people oftentimes are already stuck in serious financial trouble when we approach them on their utilities and we're there hopefully to be able to help them.

48:18Johnny Graham:And so that's really what my focus is. I just want to see this money being spent on your utility could go to so many better things, right? You can go to a much better future for us. I mean, the average national cost for a kilowatt of electricity is about 12 cents, 13 cents. Here in California, we see it ranging from 35, sometimes up to 70 cents during peak hours. And that's devastating. And our country's capacity to produce electricity directly correlates to the economic welfare of our country.

48:45Darin Olien:Yeah. And that's, I mean, and again, there's so many kind of pleomorphic benefits to that, too. Yeah. It's like, okay, you're, I mean, that's the perfect storm, too. It's like you're saving money. You have more control. and those things are innate within all of us, right, in our family. It's like if you told anyone, it doesn't matter what you believe in and what politics or whatever, if you go to anyone and say, hey, there's a way that you can save money, have more sovereignty, have more power, and have more of a sense of control.

49:21Johnny Graham:Who's going to argue against that? And that's where it gets dangerous when it becomes a right versus left conversation. Because you have people on the right that are watching a TV show like Landman, which is great. I love it. Right? But it's - So good. But Halliburton is one of the biggest sponsors of that show. Right? And there's little monologues that are done that are talking smack on the wind farms. And yes, I agree with some of it.

49:44Darin Olien:Yeah.

49:44Johnny Graham:But the challenge is - There's some truth in it. There is. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And that's all really good pieces of propaganda. You mix a little bit of truth in with a little bit of distortion and confused minds always say no. And so there's people out there knocking doors right now, talking to people and they're irritated, right? Some of them are like, why are you knocking on my door? But they're the ones fighting to help you reduce your power costs. The utility will never come and knock on your door and go, hey, we have a way of helping you save some money. That will never happen, right? And so I would just encourage people, hey, dive into this stuff.

50:11Johnny Graham:Look into it. You can make a big difference. I'm not talking a small difference. I mean, we're talking, again, an average home will make a difference of over$100 ,000 being spent. that doesn't go to improving your schools, doesn't go to improving your community. It goes to right, there's a direct path. I don't know if you've heard of opensecrets.org. It's a nonprofit. You guys should all check it out. They're phenomenal. What they do is you can put in any company website that you're interested in knowing about, and you can see exactly how much they spend on lobbying and which politicians take X amount of money from them.

50:42Johnny Graham:And these utilities donate to both sides of the aisle. They donate to Republicans. They donate to Democrats. They donate on every single side because their goal is infiltration. Opensecrets.org. Yeah, check it out. Yeah, you can put in your utility right there and you can see, oh, wow, Kamala Harris took how much from my utility? And watch where your utility money is going because it's not going to making the grid better. It's going to paying off lawsuits, paying for conferences in Italy that for some reason all of our delegates need to go out to and do conferences in Italy sponsored by these utilities.

51:12Johnny Graham:It's going to rubbing shoulders with the stakeholders of your community.

51:16Darin Olien:And I think it's important to know that it is both right and left. They're not stupid.

51:22Johnny Graham:They're paying both.

51:23Darin Olien:This is an up versus down issue. This is the ugly side of politics in general. Unfortunately, the ego starts bending quite powerfully when you start throwing money at someone. And then you don't even realize that you're being affected because it's changed by a thousand cuts too.

51:49Johnny Graham:Exactly. It's groupthink and spending time rubbing shoulders going, that guy's my friend. There's no way. He doesn't have any bad intentions. It's like, man, this is.

51:57Darin Olien:And then all those politicians or whomever, they don't have enough resources to truly dig into what the truth is. They're just being fed like the freaking pharmaceutical reps. Exactly. Who are the primary drivers of education for the damn doctors. Yeah. You're like going, um, that seems like a conflict of interest. the massive right so so again i kind of go back to you know this whole thing that we've been talking about like the the the idea that yes let's grow as much food as we can let's get to know our own farmers let's cultivate and create power ourselves let's let's let's do what it is that America was founded on.

52:44Darin Olien:Right. And that was sovereignty. Hell, in the start of our country, 90 % of this country were farmers. Right. And the reality was those farmers had waste and they had distillation and they created ethanol. So the waste stream became the ethanol for their tractors and for their other things. You know, that's the genesis of the spirit of the United States.

53:14Johnny Graham:Right, 100%. It's self-sufficiency, frontiersmanship. That is our focus. And we have to be careful too when we're being critical about our utility providers because they're acting logically. If I was head of one of these utility companies, what is my incentive? It's to bring shareholder value. It's a shareholder's premacy issue that we have in our country that's infectious even into the pharmaceutical range, right? Those pharmaceutical companies are acting with logic in the systems that are provided. But my challenge is with this is that a utility is supposed to be a public service. That's what it's intended to be.

53:48Johnny Graham:When it's shareholder premacy over everything, giving returns to our shareholders, the secondary goal becomes providing a public service. And so this is where my major critique is. And this is why I encourage, hey, you can actually do something revolutionary. The revolutionary thing you can do is start sourcing your food from a farmer that you know. Start looking at where am I getting my electricity. right because the last thing what they love is apathy that's what that's how these systems thrive is they thrive on apathetic people going ah you know they listen to this channel and then they go back to paying their utility bill or they listen to this channel and they run back down to the supermarket and they they don't think twice about where they're getting this but you guys as a middle class and even as a lower middle class we have tremendous power in the way that we consume it's it's way more powerful how we vote with our money than how we vote at the ballot box yeah and that and that's the majority of the people yeah you know and that's that's a huge we always have

54:38Darin Olien:the numbers. But I think what you said is extremely important, that apathy and confusion is the linchpin that doesn't allow for people to make those changes. So going back to that, as people are like, holy shit, this makes sense to me, what are some actions that people can take today? They're going, oh shit, yeah, my bill is just getting bigger. I want to partake in some of this I want to create my own power what are some of the things that people can start doing

55:12Johnny Graham:so a couple things too is first off if somebody comes in knocking your door and talks to you about solar give them the time of day let them show you what their options are because we have great technology to look at your utility bill and quickly find out hey how much power can we produce for you right that'd be my first step if they're really concerned about our grid vulnerability and the emp issue they can go to pulseproof.tech enter in their address and we have certain installers that carry the inventory to be able to solve this problem. So those would be some of the first action steps, not to just do a plug here, but we are the only ones addressing this problem as head on as we are right now.

55:45Johnny Graham:And so if I had an alternative, I would share that as well. But that's the first steps I would take as far as the power goes. Second step I would say is go on to opensecrets.org, put in your utility company, look closely at who they're donating to and look closely at how much you're paying every year because these utilities have done, especially in PG &E, have done a phenomenal job of making your utility bill difficult to read. So the beautiful thing is that we have with a lot of these AIs like ChatGBT is take a PDF version of your utility bill, upload it into ChatGBT and say, please explain what all these charges are.

56:17Johnny Graham:That's a good use of AI. It's a great use of AI, yes, because it'll go through and it'll scan your utility bill and say, yeah, why am I spending X amount of money towards the wildfire fund? What's the CCA program? and that's the other thing is there's a lot of zip codes that are part of the community choice aggregate programs which you're already charged for on your utility bill. There's a little charge on there called the CCA charge and if you live in certain zip codes you can get solar done at your home no cost out of pocket and no credit checks of any kind. So there are some programs that are currently available for you to take advantage of and I would encourage your consumers to look twice at their utility bill.

56:51Johnny Graham:Ask what am I paying for? What am I enrolled in already? Because there's there's alternative options for you that we have fought hard on the legislative side for to make

56:59Darin Olien:available yeah i mean listen i i i you know i i lost you know everything in the 2018 fire right so lost everything and so in that process the the good side of of it is i get to rebuild everything right in the way that honors where i live i live in a fire zone that hasn't changed right so So regardless of how it's fire, you know, I would use the caution of wildfires. And that's a political word, I think, because, you know, I don't know what the stat is. We can look it up. But it's a high percentage of. That's huge.

58:08Darin Olien:It's the very system that's causing most of the goddamn fires. Oh, yeah. Right? And that's a tricky thing. And even when the fire started for me, I was like, yeah, this is the world's changing and the environment's changing. Well, hold on. I had to sue Edison. Right. You know, because they caused the fire. Right. You know, and then Perfect Storm, the fire zone that I live in, that I chose to live in here in California, is what it is. Right. Right? Not to mention there's better ways to manage forests. There's infinitely better ways to do that, and that's a whole other conversation. I live in the woods, so I do it myself in terms of like – but I got to say that as I'm rebuilding and as I chose in getting yanked around by bureaucratic craziness trying to rebuild, I was finally like, I'm not waiting.

59:08Darin Olien:for you guys to manipulate me to do all these other upgrades in order to get power. So I'm like, I'm going off grid while I rebuild. I got to tell you, I love, love it when all of these rolling blackouts happen, and I'm like, I'm good. You know what I mean? Of course. There's something so powerful about that. You call it survival, call it just this innate control. And not control in a bad way. This is like, this is how we live. This is how we survive. This is innate. So I think that everyone listening, you can tap into that. But it takes a little bit of, hey, I know it takes a little time to learn a little something.

1:00:02Darin Olien:Look up what your power system and your power monopoly is doing. What are some steps that I can take to, number one, and like you're saying as an expert in this area, you can lower cost, bottom line. And you can do that and you get subsidies and you get support. And that's, I didn't know. I just did it. I wasn't waiting around for anyone to give me subsidies or whatever. I just like I didn't know it existed. So I just did it. Right. But what you're saying is there's programs that people can get into this. Oh, yeah.

1:00:39Johnny Graham:The vast majority of ways of going solar now cost you nothing out of pocket. I mean, I'll put my contact information to you guys if you have anybody that's curious and wants to know more. And maybe even if we don't service them, I have a huge network of partners that we can put them in contact with. And and I'm glad you said something really important. You said I have this sense of control. It's really what it is, is you've lowered your vulnerability.

1:00:59Darin Olien:Right.

1:00:59Johnny Graham:When you see everybody else losing power and you still have the capacity to do that, that's a triumph. And we should know about two things very intimately, maybe I'd say three things. More so than local politics, anything, we should learn where does our food come from? How is our water being managed? What's the condition of our water? And where is my power coming from? Those are three things you interact with every single day. You flip on that light switch, you're interacting with it. And you're right. Without having solar plus batteries on your property, you are paying more every single month.

1:01:29Johnny Graham:You are getting penalized for not learning about this, even in your wallet. So my homeowners, I've done thousands and thousands of solar projects in my career. I'm not kidding, thousands. I have yet to have a single customer call me back and go, Johnny, come and remove these panels. We want to go back to the utility. It's never one time happened. Never once. I've never had a homeowner go, hey, I was trying to sell my house and the new homeowner didn't want the solar panels. No, every new homeowner walks in and is like, cha-ching, I got panels, I got a battery. That's a huge selling point. And those are generally like the two biggest questions people have is what happens when I sell my home?

1:02:00Johnny Graham:What if the new homeowner doesn't want it? It's like, no, everybody wants to be on a cheaper, cleaner, safer alternative. There's no argument. Nobody I've never had. I'm telling you, no one has ever called me and said, please come and remove these panels. Remove my well. Yes. Remove my garden. Right. I want to be on the supermarket. Yeah, exactly. You get it. And so this is and you are doing massive damage on the consumer level to systems that we dislike. And I'm a big fan of that. Right. Every time I do a solar project, it's money out of a corrupt system that I'm happy to see get diverted into a system that is there to support people on an individual level.

1:02:34Darin Olien:Yeah, I think the term that you used before is apathy. And I think it's so – I wrote a whole book on fatal conveniences. It's so easy to do – so easy to go to the market and buy my deodorant. And I'm like, wait a minute. Well, the very systems that we're talking about is plagued throughout everything, right? So it's like I assume my deodorant isn't full of carcinogens to hurt me. But many are, right? And the fragrances and my shampoo and all of this stuff. And what we're talking about is systems that are there to worship their God, and their God is that power. Their God is that money, right? So like you were describing the shareholders.

1:03:33So if you're within that system, if you're within that company, that's the God that you are to adhere to.

1:03:42Darin Olien:And if you don't, there's someone else there that will take your job.

1:03:45Johnny Graham:It's a structural issue that goes back to, I don't know if you ever heard about the Dodge versus Ford case that happened. This is back in the early 1900s. Yeah, where Ford invented the five-day work week and he raised pay to$5 a day for all of his assembly line workers. right and dodge started losing employees left and right to this what ford did is ford said hey i'm raising the price i'm giving my people a better pay and i'm giving them a better work week right and they told the shareholders hey you guys have to tighten your belts right because what i'm doing right now is not going to benefit you directly right well dodge sued ford for this and they won because dodge's case was hey well we are we pay our shareholders x amount but ford over here is he's not paying his shareholders the same way he used to.

1:04:31Johnny Graham:He's now taking care of his employees, and we're losing employees to this. And the courts ruled in Dodge's favor that it is the job of a CEO, it's the job of the owners of these companies to put shareholder value over everything, over employee conditions, over everything. So since that case has happened, every single company has an incentive structure that is not consumer-based. It's not for the welfare of their employees. It is for the welfare of the shareholders. And so until this system goes through radical change, we're going to continue to see poison in our foods. We're going to continue to see poison in our hair products and our deodorants and even our clothes, like how much polyester is now in all of our clothing.

1:05:07Johnny Graham:We're wearing plastic water bottles. Right, exactly. And that's the other thing is that a lot of that's controlled too by the oil companies because oil, 50 % of what it's extracting from the ground is going into plastics. It's not going into filling up your gas car like you think it is which i'm all for that i i used to live in midland i used to work with oil workers i know their jobs are important their jobs are critical and i'm not some crazy environmentalist here i'm just saying that like we're drinking out of oil it's in our clothing and it's all because shareholder primacy is our number one value in this country and it's leading to some very distorted outcomes jesus you know you think about that like it won a case and so then it becomes the case that

1:05:49Darin Olien:they keep pointing to the precedent yeah and then they keep they keep using it right using it who the hell is the judge like who the hell did that and then in order for someone a judge in this case to to oversee and change that like again it goes down to you know we have the numbers so also corporations will will shift based on the winds of change they do right based on like you said before the dollar value of of what the customers are voting on right you know so if they want a change we have to continue to educate of course to realize that and i'm even learning more now too because i you know like we were talking about yeah i know some other people doing some crazy alternative energy stuff but that's not anything that will be sold to a normal person right the thing that we have right here and that what you're describing very well is we have things in place today that people can save money have more sovereignty and have more control

1:07:06Johnny Graham:over their daily life. Right.

1:07:08Darin Olien:And that is, I don't know what's more important.

1:07:12Johnny Graham:Yeah, and I love new export of alternative energies. They're critical for us. I mean, there's all sorts of new cool technology that's coming out. It's just a matter of making sure that it is able to be financed. It's able to make it through your local permits and your local regulations, and that it's manufactured in a way where if something goes wrong, it can be easily replaced. And luckily we solve all three of those problems. And a big question that a lot of people have is, well, I think I'm just going to wait until the technology gets better. It's like, I can tell you with 100 % assurity that the technology may get slightly better incrementally, but we've kind of already crossed that threshold.

1:07:46Johnny Graham:Where we're at now is the legislation is getting more and more pernicious. And the cost of this equipment is going up because of inflation. And so what I would say is, is look, don't sit around and wait, right? The technology is here. And if we need to replace out some of your components in the future with higher efficiency components, we'll do that. But the people that got solar even three or four years ago are still in a better position than the people that go solar today. Right. It's like an investment.

1:08:10Darin Olien:It's like anything. It's like if you're waiting for the perfect time, just get in. Yes. And just start doing it now. Right. And there's virtually no – it doesn't sound like there's any downside.

1:08:21Johnny Graham:No, the biggest challenge that we face in our industry is this constant game of whack-a-mole that legislators play with us. And so when that law changed in 2023 with the net metering, it caused us to lose 17 ,000 jobs in California for solar. I mean, tons of solar companies like SunPower, which was one of the largest out of San Jose, it went bankrupt. Tons of solar companies went bankrupt. And so where the consumers are getting frustrated is they're going, hey, I have solar panels in needed service. The company's gone. It's like, okay, well, we're sorry. Like, our existence of our technology is there strictly from the will of the people, not through legislation, but through the will of people.

1:08:57Johnny Graham:And so we need to encourage our neighbors to do the same because the healthier our solar and battery companies are, the longer they're going to be around and be able to service people.

1:09:06Darin Olien:Yeah. And the other side about that, you know, the China thing, it's like most of the solar panels, although cheaper, were also created by coal fire plants. Right. You think, again, it's this weird world where you think you're doing something good by buying these super cheap things.

1:09:24Johnny Graham:But at the same time, how they were created was completely horrible for the world, for pollution, for the environment. Right. I really want to address this piece head on, though, because even if solar panels are manufactured in the most abysmal conditions, the long term, if you're concerned about it from an environmental standpoint, the long term environmental impact is still a huge net positive. because you may have a one-time event of creation, but the continuous perpetuation of electricity from that far outweighs because most of our power now still comes from natural gas. And natural gas is way cleaner than the coal furnaces we used to use.

1:10:01Johnny Graham:But every kilowatt that gets made is coupled by a certain amount of natural gas that gets burned. And if you live within a few miles of some of these natural gas plants, your health conditions are significantly worse.

1:10:11Darin Olien:Right.

1:10:12Johnny Graham:We see that in northern Utah, where one of their power plants is right there at the top of Salt Lake City. And that entire valley has some of the worst air quality in the country. And these things aren't small. These things lead to mercury levels that make it unsafe to have children. It leads to rising autism. I mean, the number of health impacts is dramatic. And so I would I would say, like, look, at the end of the day, this is the same argument that we see for electric vehicles as well. You know, the manufacturing of it was the manufacturing of a combustion engine isn't that clean either. Let's be clear, right?

1:10:41Johnny Graham:And so I want to be very careful when we talk about that because – and the same even applies for EVs. If you're charging from a typical charging station without solar panels, you're not doing the environment any good. I couldn't tell you that much. Yeah, exactly. It needs to come from solar panels. At the end of the day, you need that electricity to come from a clean location.

1:11:00Darin Olien:Because the majority of power coming from California is what?

1:11:03Johnny Graham:It's still mostly natural gas. Although what's interesting is over the last decade, we haven't seen an increase in demand of power from the utilities. Why do you think that is? Just curious if you would have any guess. Because we've had all this electric vehicle adoption. Some would say, oh, maybe it's people moving out. A little bit of that, not as much as people think. But it's because of solar panel deployment. Oh, wow. Right? So we have done millions of homes. Two million, I think over two million right now in the state of California already have solar and rooftop solar on their homes. that has kept the demand for power stabilized.

1:11:35Johnny Graham:So even if you don't have solar, your utility bill is still lower because of your neighbors that did go solar. Wow. Right. Because they have helped artificially keep the demand lower by producing their own electricity. So if you see your neighbor that has solar, give them a thank you. Say, hey, you've kept my utility bill lower. And we're also a healthy form of competition to the utility. The utility knows that if they drive the price up too high, solar adoption skyrockets. So they're very careful to not let it go too high. The same way, like the price of oil, You need it between about$72 and$88.

1:12:04Johnny Graham:If it goes above that, demand drops, right? And so that's where the solar industry is playing an active role in keeping your utility low, even if you don't have it.

1:12:12Darin Olien:You know, I love this whole side of things. The more I learn, the more I lean into stuff, the more nothing is black and white. Right.

1:12:22Johnny Graham:You know, and I even look at, you know, I don't have a solar vehicle.

1:12:26Darin Olien:I don't like the electromagnetic fields of sitting on. On a giant battery. In a giant battery. And, you know, the more experts I look at, we have to work together with systems. You know, we need gas and oil. If we turn that off now, we'd be screwed. Sure. Right? So how can we move forward more intelligently and openly and use systems? Is there a way to use the current system? because a hell of a system, even though it's got its issues of power lines going through oak trees and wind knocking them over and starting the whole goddamn place on fire. So there's issues there. But that aside, is there a way, I've contemplated this too, it's like what if, I don't know the answer, but what if the monopolies got involved with micro-gridding?

1:13:25Darin Olien:What if they got, so hey, let's micro-grid. Again, we have to suspend the need for the prophet God for a second. But what if we use – so, for example, we're in Malibu and I have solar, my neighbor has solar and a few other neighbors. And together we could use the existing infrastructure. Is that a world in which that could work?

1:13:55Johnny Graham:Oh, of course. And that's I'm actually glad you brought this up because there's been test runs of some of this actually happening and currently in Texas We have something called VPPs or virtual power plants where Shell Energy was actually one of the largest investors in this And what they do is we put batteries in a home at no cost It's still tied to the grid right and so when the utility needs that power They can draw from that power bank during peak demand hours and the homeowners benefit is that they have first priority So if the power goes down, they still have a backup in their home. And the benefit to the utility is what's called the duck curve.

1:14:28Johnny Graham:And so there's certain hours in which the power is really, really cheap and very expensive. And so I want you to think of our power grid as a lot more like if we built a highway system strictly for Thanksgiving traffic. Thanksgiving traffic is the most traffic we ever get. Well, our power grid is set up in a similar way where in like the middle of the afternoon on a September hot day when peak demand is there, that's when the grid is used at its full capacity. But for the most part, the grid actually sits there pretty dormant. And so at 2, 3 in the morning, when we used to use coal plants, companies actually, like businesses, used to get paid to use power at 2 or 3 in the morning because coal would take a long time to fire up, and you can't just flip it on and off the same way you can with natural gas.

1:15:10Johnny Graham:So companies used to get paid to use power to manufacture certain goods late in the hours of the night because they need that electricity to go somewhere. Electricity likes to move, right? but microgrids would be phenomenal for us. And it's helpful for the utilities in many ways, because it allows us to be able to have this, this, this whole network of individual systems that are producing power and storing it when the utility needs. And so it is, it's an ongoing cooperation where we're constantly working with them to do that because the utilities, man, they, they out lobby us well over 10 to one.

1:15:40Johnny Graham:So it's not like we're, we're like a bunch of ragtag individual tribes going up against the Spanish colonists, right? It's like they're a unified front. They're very powerful. and they've played a very important role in all the modern luxuries we have today. So I want to give the devil its due where it's deserved. But what we really need to focus on is helping change those incentive structures in a way where it's not just how do we build longer and longer transmission lines. It's how do we make our grid more secure? How can we incentivize our utilities to get some sort of profit motive out of installing micro grids?

1:16:11Darin Olien:Well, that's ultimately what it is. Like if you can replace something and still have the legacy get their margins, you know, how do we fold? And that's a question across almost all industry, right? And I have a friend who developed an allergy-based alternative to PFAS, right? So PFAS is that Teflon, really good at its job, nonstick, heat resistant, and it's fucking in our clothing. It's in our water now. It's in our pots and pans. It never goes away either.

1:16:48Johnny Graham:Isn't it a forever chemical? Yeah, it's a forever chemical.

1:16:51Darin Olien:It bioaccumulates, and they have no idea what the hell to do with it and how to do it. And luckily, something like this, he did it, but he did it in a way that was actually a little cheaper. No kidding. version so he's already having you know subway burger king mcdonald's adopting it because it was at a price point that made sense so we have to view this stuff as we have to have people with enough um strength to understand the industry and do it at a scale that makes sense to match whatever their margins are.

1:17:38Johnny Graham:And that's the... Right. And I'm really happy you brought that up because one of the most common critiques of our industry has been, well, then why do you guys get all these subsidies? Right? Why do you get all these subsidies? I'm like, okay. The subsidies, first off, go to the consumer. Okay? So when you get solar, if you were to buy solar, up until the end of this year, you used to receive a 30 % tax credit right off of your tax bill. Right? It wasn't like a check they were writing and giving it to you. 30 % of whatever your system cost was used to come right off of your federal income tax bill, which was phenomenal, right?

1:18:09Johnny Graham:It wasn't like we were taking that tax credit and putting it in our pocket and running away with it, right? But that cost directly helped reduce your cost of power. That's going away at the end of this year, unfortunately. And so that was a big thing. Now, are we still competitive? Of course we are, right? Why is that going away? It was originally a part of the Inflation Reduction Act under the Biden administration to keep it going until 2032. But the new administration, which is heavily lobbied by, I'm not going to get into that, said, hey, we're tired of seeing solar receiving subsidies. It's like, how about this?

1:18:38Johnny Graham:How about the endless power lines that go over federal lands and the free federal land and access that they have? If we were to get rid of all the subsidies in the energy industry across the board, I would be all for that, right? I would be. It would be amazing because we would actually, because the oil companies and the utilities, they receive huge amounts of subsidies. and so if we got rid of all subsidies and made it a fair competitive landscape solar would kick it still in the teeth and that's just simply because of transmission right when you have to ship a thing from one destination to another destination you lose power when you make it on site you win and so it would be nice to see all subsidies go away on all sides of the aisle i would love that but the subsidies that we've seen for the industry so far have been a direct to consumer subsidy it's

1:19:23Darin Olien:been amazing for them yeah because that's the thing let's talk about that for a second too because I have miles of lines going through my property, like miles. Does the utility rent that from you?

1:19:40Johnny Graham:Do they write you a check for running their power lines on your property? No. So are you subsidizing them? Of course. There we go.

1:19:48Darin Olien:Yeah. And on top of it, how much power do they have to produce in order for it to travel to meet the power needs of said millions and millions and millions of customers.

1:20:01Johnny Graham:Right.

1:20:01Darin Olien:Right. And so you're having to overproduce because of the loss. Right. You know, and how much loss are we talking about? Like, yeah, like I don't know. We don't have to get

1:20:14Johnny Graham:in the specifics, but it's a huge amount, especially in the summertime. Yeah. Yep. And

1:20:21Darin Olien:On top of the distance, the heat as well has, what does it drop off usually?

1:20:32Johnny Graham:It can be 30, 40, 50 % sometimes depending on the conditions and the distance. And that's the other issue, right? Going back to shareholder premises. So back when we used to have the utility on the power plant and on the transmission lines, it actually worked a little bit better at that level. because now the utility gets incentivized for every mile of power lines that they lay or bury. They get usually about a 10 % profit on that. So now they're getting the power from an even further, further away distance. A lot of it's even coming in from like Tijuana where they did some pretty nasty things to some of the landowners there to get their power lines ran in into San Diego.

1:21:06Johnny Graham:And it's basically just strong-arm capitalism with no real intentionality or intelligence around the efficiency. It's all profit-motivated. What are you excited about right now? Oh, man. I'm excited about the level of awareness around this topic. If any of you users right now just go onto YouTube and type in EMP, there is a ton of content around this topic. I mean, Practical Engineering did a great video on this. I got over 1.5 million views earlier this year. And so people are waking up to these things. And I think they're seeing their institutions are not as trustworthy as they once thought they were.

1:21:44Johnny Graham:And they're starting to question things. And I would always recommend everybody just question everything. Question your utility bill. Question your nutrition labels. Question when you're sitting there in your bathroom. Just look at the back of that bottle and tell me how many of those chemicals you can pronounce.

1:21:56Darin Olien:You want that on your body. You want that on your skin.

1:21:59Johnny Graham:Do you want to feed your children this? These are the things that we want to ask ourselves. And I think we're starting to go into that period of capitalism more. We're starting to say, hey, we're still a capitalist country. But we have to have a capitalist country with some values behind it. And I think people are starting to wake up more and more. to the power that they have at the consumer level. And so I think we're in the earlier stages of this. I think a lot of the, I would say, maybe some of the more hippie people back in the 1990s and 2000s started to do a good job of voicing this. And I think now in 2025, we're starting to cross into a threshold where things that used to be considered fringe are now becoming mainstream.

1:22:37Johnny Graham:They're waking up to the conspiracies of what their governments are doing. I mean, they're starting to wake up to these institutions. And I think that if we can position ourselves well in a way where we can, like your friend who does the algae Teflon replacement, we can see a big shift happening there. We can see people going, hey, I'm done paying for my own demise. Right? Fatal conveniences. Yeah, fatal conveniences. I'm done with these fatal conveniences for paying for things that don't affect me. And I think once it starts to hit the shareholders, that's when you're going to see the actual change happen.

1:23:08Johnny Graham:But if you continue to pay for that problem, you don't reserve the right to complain about it. That's my opinion. I believe free speech comes with a cost.

1:23:15Darin Olien:Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I think the thing that is blaringly more obvious, and it's not necessarily across the board in other countries, but no one trusts the government, you know, and also big industry. But it also doesn't exist in other countries. I travel quite a bit and a lot of the Scandinavian countries, you literally talk to normal people and they go, no, we're taken care of. You're going, wow. And that is a huge part of being happy, about being content, about these kind of things. And so it's that matrix moment where you're going, whoa, do I really trust the government has my best interest?

1:24:07Darin Olien:So if I don't, am I going to heat the ocean and change the government myself? No. But these things, I'm a big proponent of healthy habits that we can literally do ourselves. Absolutely. And that's where instead of complaining, take an action. Right. Do some research. I think if people started to do that it would be less about pointing fingers and more about okay looking inward okay cool I I here's some things I can do absolutely because at the end of the day your family your community your friends you have influence on that they have influence on you and the more hey man look at I just found look at this article about where the power's coming from blah blah blah and look at how cheap i can get the solar panels from whatever it is and then you tell your friend and friend and then the next thing you know you're

1:25:06Johnny Graham:like okay cool that's how we thin the herd yeah because it's it's a tidal wave right now of herd mentality but you step outside of that and you make a difference you start sharing it with others that's the scariest thing ever for these for these shareholder owned companies that don't work our interest is is people starting to wake up and say hey i'm done with this yeah i'm done with this even if you know 10 of the population makes the shift our state is what 40 million people we're at 2 million right now the approximately 2 million that have rooftop solar on individual levels not including our school districts that have started to adopt this and so that's what 5 of our population like less than that and so 10 happens that's a big difference right and we have another 4 million homes that got it done the utilities are gonna have to start scratching their head going hey we need to become more innovative and less regulatory right right Innovation over regulation is always the goal.

1:25:54Yeah, and again, that's where the numbers we always have on our side.

1:25:59Johnny Graham:Yeah, absolutely.

1:26:00Darin Olien:So the more people that know, the more people that take action on that knowledge, the better for them and the better for the society at large.

1:26:10Johnny Graham:Yeah, your biggest threat isn't China, Russia, some other country. Your biggest threat is the corporations that have you in a box and in a corner here in the United States right now. And so you can be a soldier in that fight by just changing the direction of where your money goes. That's all it takes. That's the best bullet to shoot at your enemy is to say, I'm not spending money on this thing anymore. I want to put my money towards farmers that are getting their food responsibly. I want to help support those things. And those things can become the mainstream. And that's what I'm excited about the most is things that were considered fringe and inconvenient are slowly, with everybody's individual vote, becoming more and more convenient, more and more cost effective.

1:26:47Johnny Graham:And they're going to become mainstream. It's just a matter of when.

1:26:50Darin Olien:Yeah. And that's the cool thing about these conversations and about the work you're doing, about people you know, the people I know that are doing these. I mean, honestly, like people have asked me all the time, like, how are you not upset or depressed or all of that stuff? Because number one, I'm not getting my information that's really feeding me every day by those outlets. Right. Number one, I've cut that off. Number two, I've surrounded myself with badass people. Like I was telling you, driving here, I'm talking to one of the top freaking researchers and stem cells and nutritional interventions and like legit, powerful, cool people.

1:27:36Darin Olien:and then my other buddy Chris is doing some incredible stuff and the stuff you're doing, that inspiration feeds us back, right? Absolutely. It's literally the people that we surround. If you're surrounding yourself with people just talking about the next thing to complain about, which they want you to do that, then you're just feeding that horrible view.

1:28:04Johnny Graham:Yeah, it's like a black pill of like, oh, everything is ruined. And it's this nihilistic viewpoint. It's like, no, there are people like your friends, like mine. We are fighting for you guys every day. Right. Right. There are people that are fighting to make the world a better place. And you should join the ranks of that. Don't become blackpilled, nihilistic, and apathetic. Otherwise, you're on that team.

1:28:22Darin Olien:Yeah.

1:28:23Johnny Graham:Right. They got you. Right. I cannot tell you how many people I've met that were frustrated, negative people. They're like, oh, I hate my utility. Da, da, da, da, da. Well, I'm not doing solar. That's a scam. And I'm like, we just spent the last 30 minutes discussing your disdain for this. but at the same time you throw your hands up and that's not productive. I want people to be productive and positive. Like, hey, there are so many amazing solutions and hardworking men and women across this country that are dedicating their lives to making this world a better place for their future and for their children's children.

1:28:52Johnny Graham:That's what I want to see. There's a great quote that says, there's something to be said about men who plant trees whose shade they'll never rest under. And I think all of us could be that at some level. Even if we don't see the world change for ourselves today, hey, if we could plant some trees that give our great-grandchildren some shade, I think they'll appreciate that. Big time.

1:29:10Darin Olien:And the other element of leading with curiosity rather than it is what it is. Right. And it's just happening. And so therefore it's happening to me. Right. And you're like going, Jesus Christ, that's not how I want to live.

1:29:25Johnny Graham:It's not a fighting spirit either. No, no. It's defeatist. Yeah.

1:29:28Darin Olien:And it's like, and again, if you keep feeding yourself that kind of same thing, then you are literally under the table paralyzed by your own habits.

1:29:38Johnny Graham:Right.

1:29:39Darin Olien:You know, and no thanks, man.

1:29:41Johnny Graham:I completely agree with that.

1:29:42Darin Olien:Well, dude, you're doing some great, great stuff. Thanks for educating me more on this and the crew that's listening. Because, again, it's these conversations, but also the things that people can do to take steps towards It's having more clarity about their life, more sovereignty. And I think anyone on the planet would want that.

1:30:07Johnny Graham:Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Darren. I love your work, too. I mean, just please keep carrying this message forward. Make people aware that there are solutions. And that will be all it takes for everything to just shift into a more positive direction. Yeah, man. Solutions are king. Of course. Thanks, brother. Of course. Thank you.