Barrett Bilotta On Raising $350 Million To Accelerate The Transition To Clean Energy

Barrett Bilotta raised hundreds of millions in capital for his energy company in the past year alone. Today, they are enjoying hypergrowth as they expand from the northeast into other parts of the country. The venture, Agilitas Energy, has attracted financing from the top-tier investor, CarVal Investors, and has recently acquired New England Battery Storage.

In this episode, you will learn:

• How Agilitas Energy is building the infrastructure of tomorrow’s clean energy
• Picking the right investors for your startup
• All the employment they are creating in the process

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About Barrett Bilotta:

Barrett is the President, Chief Executive Officer, and co-founder of Agilitas Energy. In addition, Barrett is a co-founder and Managing Partner of Madbury Capital, the private equity affiliate of Agilitas Energy. He also serves on the Board of Directors and is a member of the Investment Committee.

Barrett leads the overall strategy of Agilitas Energy and oversees all functional business units, including development, EPC, asset management and operations, with a focus on deal structuring, project development, finance, and general management.

Barrett graduated from the University of New Hampshire and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He retired as a Captain from the U.S. Army National Guard.

Connect with Barrett Bilotta:

• Crunchbase
• LinkedIn
• Zoominfo
• PitchBook

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show. So very excited about our guest today I mean it’s a pretty remarkable journey. you know again you know I’ve seen a lot you know of people that go into the army. You know that they that the discipline the the work ethic is absolutely. Mindblowing and I think that the story of our guest today you’re gonna find it super inspiring and again you know when it comes to building scaling financing all the good stuff that we like to hear so we without farther do let’s welcome our guest today bear it biotta welcome to the show.

Barrett Bilotta: Thank you so much Aleandro It’s great to be here.

Alejandro Cremades: I so originally born you know and raised there in Massachusetts you know you grew up in out of the suburbs. You know out of a Boston so give us a little of a walkthrough memory lane. How was life growing up.

Barrett Bilotta: Sure, absolutely so yes I grew up in a ah small town called Westford Massachusetts I’m an only child ended up kind of getting into sports at an an early age and primarily hockey. As a goaltender which you know looking back on. It was one of the the most important things in terms of being able to deal with a lot of the stress and in the environment that exists within within running a business ended up going to ah u and h um getting a degree in in political science. But during my. Tenure at uandh between my freshman and sophomore year I ended up enlisting within the coast guard reserve went down to New Jersey for basic training during that in between summer and. Got a lot of discipline and and and saw a lot of new people from all over the country that that really gave me a lot of perspective on on on the good people of the us and and a lot of the counterparties that wanted to go ahead and serve the country because again that was just a couple of years after September Eleventh then

Alejandro Cremades: And what? what? what was the trigger for that buried I mean what trigger you to say I wouldn’t list. You know what? what? what was that the you know the sequence right.

Barrett Bilotta: Yeah, absolutely I mean so I have come from a a family that has a long lineage of military service and I think it was definitely something that my father had encouraged and I had always looked up to individuals that have served their country. Ah, whether it was a career or just doing the four years and felt that it was. It was the right thing to do um both from a personal standpoint as well as you know from a patriotic standpoint at the time and. I I Also had the thought after you know coming out of boy scouts and being an eagle scout that this was just kind of a natural progression in terms of a lot of the skills that I had learned in the scouts and um, wanted to kind of go ahead and and put those to work and kind of continue on with that with that that service aspect.

Barrett Bilotta: And and I ended up. You know when I got back from basic from the coast guard that next year I ended up actually transitioning into the army national guard and ah Rotc primarily because at that time they they were offering a. Much better deal in terms of financing for college. You know it was it was one of those things where I had to pay my own way whether it was loans or savings or whatnot and it was just a kind of an offer that I was like well I got it I got to do this this just makes too much sense and so throughout my college. Time for sophomore through senior year I was in the national guard as well as in the ah rotc program and then in ah and then in 2007 I when I graduated I was commissioned as ah as a second lieutenant in the army and from that point on. Um. You know, started to do some active service and and get trained up as a logistics officer and while that was all going on I still had a proclivity specifically to business and always had an interest in kind of making money in doing doing deals so to speak and so. Towards my junior senior year of college and then right thereafter I ended up acquiring a bunch of a bunch of units that were around the university of New Hampshire to rent as student, housing and.

Barrett Bilotta: That was back in the day when it was the subprime loan. Go-go days and they were just giving out money to pretty much anybody and the the good news was is that all of those all of those deals were able to pay the mortgage. It was. There was no failure. There. Even though believe it or not the interest rates on those properties were close to 13% which is which I think about that now and it’s it’s it’s crazy to think about and so I always had you know while I was in the army kind of this ongoing property business with a few units helped to pay the Bills. You know, just trying to.

Alejandro Cremades: Wow! yeah.

Barrett Bilotta: Build a little bit of equity in everything and what what ended up happening is when I was done my active portion of service with the army and had transitioned full time into the national guard I ended up joining a small tech company called dexrex out of Amherst. Um, Massachusetts with 2 close friends that I went to high school with and this was all about archiving instant messages and text messages and those types of things and then converting it into like an email format primarily for archiving and in doing that. I ended up meeting my my business partner today named Ken Rubin who was at that time a senior vice president over at iron mountain um, on the digital archiving side of the business who became on our board of directors around 2010 and when dexrex ended up winding down and we sold that company towards mid Twenty Eleven ah Ken and I were just talking and he was asking. He’s like hey what do you What do you want to do like what? what What’s your plan and I said I don’t know I’m I’m really kind of interested in the student housing. It’s made. It’s you know it’s always paid the bills all the way through the recession I feel like it’s a really good asset class to continue to invest into and Ken was like hey this sounds great. Let me go ahead and raise some money from some friends and family I’ll get the money you go ahead and run it.

Barrett Bilotta: And so we ended up acquiring several properties in Durham new hampshire between that 2011 to 2013 timeframe and then frankly ended up stumbling on a really big opportunity in downtown Durham New Hampshire that ended up becoming a property called madbury commons which was at a 225000 Square foot ah redevelopment of of downtown Durham and so that was actually the precipice. For us getting into the energy business because as that construction of that big project was going on around 20142015 that was when some of the solar initiatives and programs were becoming you know law in New Hampshire and so all of a sudden we started to have these solar developers. Approach us and say hey can you lease us your roof. We’d like to lesh your roof and and we said what? what? geez okay that that sounds interesting. We weren’t going to do anything with the roof otherwise so this is kind of like found money and it made us go ahead and do a deeper dive into that business model of of solar energy.

Alejandro Cremades: And that’s a ideally touch and we’ll talk about that in just a little bit I want to double click here on a few things you know that you mentioned because I think bare they are like really interesting. So one is you know one that comes to mind is what kind of obviously when you are in the army. You know you you develop this Absolutely incredible discipline.

Barrett Bilotta: Um.

Alejandro Cremades: How do you think that that discipline you know translates into being an entrepreneur and running a business.

Barrett Bilotta: Great question I would say the the first thing is that number one the military definitely goes ahead and starts to format. You know what? your daily routine is going to be based on a variety of. Aspects of of the job that you’re in and so in in being an officer and specifically being younger than a lot of the individuals that you’re going ahead and in in commanding or in charge of number 1 you need to. Learn how to communicate with people that are more your senior and be able to listen to their ideas and their points of view as they’ve been in the military longer than you but at the end of the day you still have to have that. The the authority to go ahead and say this is this is what we’re going to do and so that was like a huge learning experience. Um in terms in terms of being able to deal with people that have their own points of view that are coming from all different walks of life and have had many different experiences than you’ve had in your life. And being able to kind of traverse that environment was was hugely important in terms of helping me become like more of a dynamic individual. Um, because at the end of the day you know in business and and you’re well aware of this. You know we’re meeting so many different people that.

Barrett Bilotta: Have all different experiences all different points of view. They have different personality types and you have to be able to kind of mold and mend things together to get the mission done and I would say that the military number one had made me. Able to do that at a very young age. Um, and you know the other thing is just getting into that daily that daily kind of routine and cadence to be able to take on the day and take on new things that are going to get thrown at you that you have no expectation that they’re coming out with you know. That also was really learned in the military at least from my perspective being able to be calm, cool and collected and deal with the issue that you had no idea was going to be an issue today but guess what now it’s an issue and now we have to deal with it and we were’re going to tackle the bull by the horns I would say that had had been instilled in me. Number 1 by my father and then number 2 confirmed by by my military experience.

Alejandro Cremades: So Let’s talk about that tackling the bull by the horns I mean I find that in business you either succeed or you learn you know period because I mean really when things don’t fall the way that you want them to be. You know is like where you really you know, get to learn you know and get to grow and you typically don’t learn anything from your successes. But you know I guess you know with your experience with the instant messaging company with x-rigs you know, Obviously you know it didn’t unfold the way that you had hoped for. But what was the takeaway you know from that I mean what? what did you really learn from from that experience. So.

Barrett Bilotta: Absolutely great question. What I would say my number 1 takeaway from that was to have a clear strategy invision in particular with a software company and with clients of a software company. They’re always asking for new features more things. And we just had the experience there that we were trying to do everything to please everyone and at that in that resulted in kind of scope creep and trying to to do too much with too little and that was just that’s what really became a problem there. Um, trying to integrate with all these different platforms having a development team. That’s obviously very small. Um but trying to keep them on a you know, certain task and path and I think that that kind of gets back to like we have the things that are important. And then we have the things that are urgent and the client’s always going to say all of these things are urgent but they may not actually be important to the business and the strategy of your organization and so I was really young. You know I was I was in my my. Early 20 s mid 20 s at that time and I had never done anything like that and I also don’t envision myself as as ah as a software guy per se and that was just something that in looking back from ah where.

Barrett Bilotta: You know where we came from that’s something that I would have changed and and one of the things that I focused on in going going forward on my other ventures and then the other thing that I would just go ahead and say is that all Capital is not the same.. There is definitely a huge amount of value. And making sure that the investors within your company or the investors that were seeking you know have other value just other than money because money is is fluid and it’s interchangeable and lots of different people or organizations have that. But there’s particular people that can add value to the business and we should have sought those individuals out harder at Dex-rex to go ahead and kind of smooth the edges and probably provide some of that guidance that you know would have helped us succeed. Versus having to to go ahead and shut it down.

Alejandro Cremades: Now with a with madbury you know which is the operation that you have going on for the real estate I mean obviously you know it has been developing over the years since you were at the army and you started getting a few properties and and now I mean you guys are like managing hundreds you know of them. Ah, you know, really nice operation and obviously this operation led to what you’re doing now you know with aggilitas you know which is like this a a rocket ship. You know that thing that you guys are building you were alluding to it earlier on how you know you listen to the market. And by listening to the market and listening to the inbound you know queries that you were getting around the the interest in using you know some of your properties for solar. You know, development and and things of that nature. You know it made you think it made you think that there was something else that you guys could be doing that you were not doing so. So what was that thought process of figuring things out and coming to the realization that hey I think that we got something of value I think we can realize more out of this. But most importantly, there is an initiative here that we are not really capitalizing on right.

Barrett Bilotta: Yeah, absolutely great. Great question, big picture. You know in thinking about real estate development and solar energy development. We could understand even with having no knowledge on how solar energy works in a development process. Solar energy that it’s pretty synergistic in terms of the skill set to go ahead and get say an apartment building approved through the municipality and all the various authorities having jurisdiction versus a solar array getting approved through that same municipality right? and so we were. You know when you think about real estate development. It’s obviously a very dynamic industry There’s always a lot of people that are opposing development for whatever reason and there’s construction costs that need to be dealt with there’s other problems with like easements or title or what have you. As with any type of item that’s getting built on real property these these issues are all over the place and so solar energy in a lot of ways is very similar to that skill set. That makes a successful real estate developer. It’s just that the product in particular that we’re selling to the marketplace is different. We’re not renting ah units anymore. We’re now selling Kilowatt hours and so that was the original thought process in terms of why this was interesting.

Barrett Bilotta: And then when we started to dig a little bit deeper. We started to understand that number one at the time the state of New Hampshire was putting in place a net metering program that allows Kilowatt hours to get sold at what we would call the standard retail rate. In the marketplace. So whatever your utility is charging. We’re getting paid that same amount coupled with the investment tax credit from the federal government that also just added more fuel to the fire and when we started to run some of these performas and dig a little deeper. We started to see that. Wow this is starting to get very attractive similar to finding a good real estate deal and no one else is really doing this in New Hampshire so we should probably go ahead and and take a really hard look at it and and that’s when we started to go ahead and partner with some other companies in that marketplace. Ah, to do some solar development primarily in New Hampshire and that was around 2014.

Alejandro Cremades: So I guess for the people that they that they are listening to really get it. What ended up being the business model of agilityittas. How do you guys make money.

Barrett Bilotta: Absolutely so so this is yeah fast forwarding to today we develop which is we permit um solar energy energy storage projects and then solar plus energy storage projects primarily. And when I when we say permit we bring them to what so a status of shovel ready meaning ready to go ahead and start construction. We also buy a lot of projects that are either pre-shovel ready. Or are shovel ready and that we just know that we can make it better than what the current developer is doing we also and so that that that obviously has inherent value those those permits those entitlements those rights for those projects have have value because most of the projects that we’re doing are coming with. What’s called a power purchase agreement or a state type program in which the utility is buying all of the energy that your solar array can produce for the next twenty Twenty five years and so on and so forth. So you already know who your counterparty is from the revenue perspective which is one of the great things. At least with with the majority of solar projects that we’re doing. We also internally in our company have our own Epc group which stands for engineering procurement and construction. We do all of our own designs and engineering all the procurement of like the solar panels and the other major capital equipment and then wze actively manage.

Barrett Bilotta: Construction of our projects and so we earn fees in doing that as well and then the third leg of our business is the asset management group which is in a lot of ways some of the most dynamic in terms of the day-to-day operations because that group is primarily number 1 operating. All of our operating fleet on a day-to-day basis. But they are actually also in what we would call the merchant electricity markets like Iso New England or New York Iso which are the actual transmission operators bidding and forecasting. Our battery systems in and out of the marketplace There’s there’s multiple different markets just think of it just like ah like a stock market exchange if you will just for electricity and where we’re trading electricity. We’re inf frequencyquency regulation which is a a different type of ah. Market where we’re stabilizing the fluctuation of the grid on any given hour because the the grid itself needs to go ahead and maintain a frequency that that’s carried throughout the entire grid. Otherwise you start to have a lot of problems with rolling blackouts and and things like that and so you know. Those are the 3 main pillars and then of course we go ahead and we also put in place all the financing for these projects which unfortunately is very complicated for energy projects because there there are tax attributes or specifically this product called tax equity where we have.

Barrett Bilotta: Large corporations or banks that just want to invest in a deal to buy the tax credits to offset their tax liability which is a lot of structuring and in things like that. So those are the main pillars in terms of how agilota energy earns money and then of course on the projects that we do. End up ah bringing to fruition in terms of completion. We own a substantial portion of those projects with our investor so when we think about agiitas energy unlike a lot of the market that exists today. We really look at ourselves as a clean energy company trying to take in. Be in all areas of the value chain where most companies in the marketplace that are of similar size to ourselves are only in 1 particular aspect of the value chain whether it’s just development meaning they just want to go ahead and get those permits and then sell those permits to somebody else. Or just Epc or just asset management. We’re trying to go ahead and create something that is doing everything clean energy for these types of projects and ideally we’re soup to nuts in terms of of how we monetize them and and create value.

Alejandro Cremades: Now in terms of the capitalizing the business I mean how much capital have you guys raised to date for this.

Barrett Bilotta: So yeah, so big picture our equity investment that happened may of last year was around $350,000,000 um, and that’s bifurcated between what we would call corporate capital as well as project equity. Capital and I would just differentiate that by saying when we have a project that is shovel readyady. There is a much lower cost of capital that wants to get into that project versus taking the development risk that exists or taking construction risk that exists within the marketplace. So in a lot of ways the way that we go ahead and and recycle our capital is primarily by by spending the money at risk to develop a project and then once that project is shovel ready. We’re then selling that into a specific project holding company. Where that holding company has a lower cost of equity than say our development capital and then that project um, is then financed through our debt our tax equity which we’re we’re in the marketplace raising all the time. Um, and so. What that really does is it goes ahead and it it allows for the investor which is in both segments of the business on the development side with us as well as in the project holding company with us because we own a substantial amount of that project holding company. It allows them to go ahead and diversify.

Barrett Bilotta: What they’ve invested in as well as allocate investment capital from their investors that maybe are’re looking for more of a clipping a coupon type return versus a bigger return on investing in the actual say equity or cap table of Ailitos Energy Inc which is which is much more. Like ah like a startup type ah multiple effect in terms of what we’re trying to do here and and I would just say that you know over the course of of the several years because we are truly an infrastructure type company in dealing with building these projects which are expensive and suck up a lot of capital. You know we’ve raised hundreds of millions of dollars of project level financing as well over the past years. Um, you know that but that being construction debt permanent debt tax equity and everything in between um, but really the investment that happened in 22 is kind of hitting that 5 to 7 year horizon and adding fuel in the tank that allows us to be able to do hundreds of Megawatts per year in getting them through the the lifecycle that that exists today in terms of development to construction to turn on.

Alejandro Cremades: Now now 1 thing here that that I know you know has been very important to you guys as the experience of raising money is the you know putting that that the highlight on relationships. So why were relationships so important to you.

Barrett Bilotta: Um, it’s been. It’s been quite exciting.

Alejandro Cremades: As part of this fundraising journey.

Barrett Bilotta: So we started out in call it the tail into 2021 figuring out that we could not go ahead and grow a jillitas energy on organic equity anymore. It was one of the things that the real estate business. Had been funding the energy business and we had sold off assets that were operating in 2020 made a good profit on those assets but reinvested all the proceeds back into the business of agillitas energy. To go ahead and work on the next portfolio and that next portfolio was growing so fast and getting so large that we could no longer spoon feed it anymore. It was just too difficult and so we went out and did a small syndication of talking with. Variety of investors all institutional a lot of the big names looking to see what was the appetite to invest in a jillotos energy and what we were doing and you know Alejandro I’ll tell you I was blown away in terms of the reception that we got we everybody wanted to do a deal. It was at a peak type moment for clean energy in 2022, you could just see that people were just not as excited about oil and gas anymore and people had energy dollars that they had to allocate somewhere which still exists today on on the ah on the back of the inflation reduction ass.

Barrett Bilotta: Excuse me inflation reduction act that was passed in August so it was just it was just the right time to get out there and when we were doing that we had sold our portfolio of operating solar projects to carval in 2020 and I had always. You know had a great relationship with one of the individuals over there that was the lead on that deal and so Derek and myself had continued talking um have a very cordial relationship and I had mentioned to him that we were looking to raise money and that we were. Looking to go ahead and make a big time. Go of this and explain to him what our current portfolio looked like he was obviously extremely excited and in any type of deal where there is a a buyer and a seller. That’s that’s you know a large deal and is super complicated. There’s people that do what they say they’re going to do and then there’s people that say 1 thing and don’t end up living up to their word and I can just tell you that that was we had ah such a good experience that first time around that that really meant a lot to us because look as an entrepreneur.

Barrett Bilotta: And not having investors in your company and then making that leap of faith to go ahead and take in capital especially institutional capital. You don’t have any idea what that counterparty is going to be like the day after you close you know, obviously they want to get the deal done. But then things change three weeks in when they’re asking you a bunch of crazy questions or they’re going to put enormous reporting requirements on you or they just have a different plan and so that’s ah, that’s a lot of trust to go ahead and do that. Um, and so when we were. Evaluating essentially the five offers that we got I would say the number one most important thing between myself my Cfo and ah the the 2 other major owners of the the company Ken and amen who were both my our partners in and madbury put relationships as being one of the top. Ah, things that we wanted to have is that we know that we have a counterpart party that is trustworthy that’s going to do right by us and that we’re not going to be in this tumultuous relationship where the company wants to do 1 thing but the investor wants to do something different and so we ended up picking carval. Ah, enclosed with them about six months later in may of of 2022 now with that being said, they hit all the numbers that we wanted to do too so that was the added benefit. They did the deal we wanted to do and we knew that we had the benefit the benefit the benefit of having gone around the track with them once before and 2020.

Barrett Bilotta: And I can I can tell you you know in February of 2023 I couldn’t think more highly of the team over there and how our relationship has grown and I just think that you know again getting back to to making the selection based on relationships. You know we we have a shared vision. And they are the type of organization in their actions that are going to support everything that we want to do as a company and they do truly believe in us which I think in general is sometimes harder to find within the private equity market specifically because like look we’re all getting out of bed. In the morning to make money especially on the investor side they want to go ahead and they want to hit their hurdle rates. They want to get investors return of capital and meet expectations and all those types of things and and so to go ahead and have to deal with that I’m saying from from a car vile perspective. But then also go ahead and think about what is the best thing for a Jillotas energy is a balancing act. Um, and it’s it’s been working out great so far so I I can just you know tell you that the relationship matters and the counterparty really does matter.

Alejandro Cremades: Love it now for the people that are listening to get an understanding on the scope and size of agility test today I mean anything that you can share in terms of number of employees or anything else.

Barrett Bilotta: Absolutely so we’ve we’ve always kept a very lean headcount so you know in 2021 we ended the year with 17 employees by the end of 2022 we were 30 employees. We’re going to grow to about 50 employees. Um.

Alejandro Cremades: Wow.

Barrett Bilotta: This year and we’re doing projects you know all over the country. We’ve got projects under construction pretty much in every state of new england as well as New York we’re working on on our first few Texas based assets as well as we expand our national geography. And we’re actually also looking at um, entering into new asset classes specifically hydroelectric power which we find to be very synergistic with ah energy storage and so you know in general. We’ve been growing without getting into specifics and in terms of the actual dollars. But yeah of revenue we’ve been growing revenues probably about 400% year over year um because we’ve just again continued to explode. With the amount of projects and volume that we’re doing in this year based on our fy 23 projections which can always change. We know how projections are we’re going to have a banner year in terms of the growth of the company and in terms of everything that we’re doing so you know we’re just. From my standpoint we just want to go ahead and continue doing good deals 1 by 1 building the fleet of operating projects incrementally because there’s never it’s very rare. You find the grand slam home run deal. Although I’d like to think we have a couple of them. But.

Barrett Bilotta: When we go ahead and we amalgamate enough of those projects and we continue to expand everything that we’re doing outside of of New England through the rest of the country and have that repeatable business model that we’re already doing just in new places. You really do end up having an an organization that has tremendous value. Ah, whether it’s to the public markets or to another energy company that exists in the marketplace like we we like to envision ourself as as being the experts in energy storage and how we can be dynamic and connecting energy storage with all these clean forms of of power Generation. So. That’s you know we’re just getting. We keep our heads down and that’s what we keep focusing on to go ahead and and grow the business with with the right people in the right roles.

Alejandro Cremades: Now as we’re talking about growth Trijeoryy here you know, thislips me to believe into you know the next question that I wanted to ask you and that is if you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world where the vision of aggilita is fully realized what does that world look like.

Barrett Bilotta: Wow! So I’ve never been asked that question before that that vision is that we are either continuing on as a larger private company or a public company continuing to bring. Renewable Energy assets to the marketplace to go ahead and transition our grid from Fossil Fuels to to clean energy and we’re doing it in a way that is responsible meaning that we are. Figuring out how to deal with the intermittent nature of clean energy generation by using batteries or other technologies to go ahead and smooth out those Peaks of generation when there is no generation so that the grids the utilities and most important the consumer. Not need to worry about whether or not there’s going to be a rolling blackout or whether or not power prices are going to shoot to the moon because there’s a scarcity that’s that’s really what we want to go ahead and do um and also we want to put people to work with all of our projects. You know we. Talk about the head countunt of Agillitas energy. But we are hiring hundreds of electricians site work labor other things throughout these projects because we are truly building putting steel in the ground and building this infrastructure which is always a benefit not only to those.

Barrett Bilotta: Ah trades but also to the communities that they’re getting put in and that you know these are property taxpaying entities you know or or projects. They’re not sending more kids to the school or requiring too many more services from police or fire. They’re just one of the things that exists where we’re able to take a valuable asset to the whole grid in the whole community but also able to share in that value creation with the local community as well and we’re able to do that both from a taxpaying perspective but also with a lot of our projects. We’re able to offer discounts on electricity on our community solar projects and that’s primarily going to to local residents in small business. Um specifically in Massachusetts which a bunch of the programs. Um incentivize that.

Alejandro Cremades: Now you know we’re talking about the future but I want to talk about now about the past with a lens of reflection if I was to put you into a time machine and I bring you back in time you know back in time. Maybe to that point where you were still in the Army. You know you were. Hey you know I’m going to buy some properties. Do some stuff on my own if you were able to have a sit down with your younger self and being able to tell that younger bear it one piece of a device before launching a business. What would that be and why giving what you know now.

Barrett Bilotta: So interesting I think if I was going to go ahead and and talk to my younger self I would say don’t get distracted. Don’t follow the shiniest new object all the time and I don’t mean that in terms of looking at real estate and and going into solar. But every day we’re presented with opportunities. Um and the grass always looks greener with the new opportunity and for whatever reason at least this is how I view myself as an entrepreneur I’m super self- motivattivated I’m a self-starter I get excited I’m passionate. About about things that that I want to do and the issue with that is that can sometimes be a double edged sword where you’re working on a project or you’re working at the task at hand but something else kind of comes across and you get excited about it. You know why? because it’s new. It’s unknown it’s It’s just kind of that. It’s almost like a first date if you will and that sometimes is a detriment and I was I think about myself today where I’m extremely disciplined I’m extremely focused I know what’s the most important thing to focus on almost every day that is a. Total that’s totally different than how I was in in my in my twenty s and just starting out I was always the most excited about about the new thing whether it was like I was trying to refinance one of my my properties in Durham but then someone said hey there’s like a hotel for sale in Florida.

Barrett Bilotta: You’re like Wow I Want to go look at that and that’s that’s not that’s not the way to go ahead and do it. That’s what I’d be telling myself.

Alejandro Cremades: Now for the people that are listening bear it that will love to reach out and say hi. What is the best way for them to do so.

Barrett Bilotta: Oh they can go ahead and and and send me ah an email um or which is b ballata I mean I don’t know how we the best way to give that out Alejandro um, but yeah, so so my email is b.

Alejandro Cremades: But you can’t you can just you could just share the email. What’s the email.

Barrett Bilotta: B I l o t t a at agillitasenergy.com

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing and are you also active on social media like Linkedin or anything else.

Barrett Bilotta: Yes, and I’m also on Linkedin and of course is barettbalata and then agiotas energy has its own Twitter account as well. So you can follow us there for for updates and agiotas energy also has its own Linkedin page as well. So so to the extent you want to see all the new. Activities we got going on. We’d we’d love to have you along for the ride. And yeah, of course I’m I’m always happy to answer questions. Love to help aspiring entrepreneurs. Um, that’s one of the things that I want to give back the most is is continuing to help other individuals achieve what they want to achieve in in business. So. Happy to happy to to lend an ear and give advice to the extent I’m valuable.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing, well bear it. Thank you so much for being on the show today. It has been an honor to have you with us.

Barrett Bilotta: Thank you so much. It was great meeting you and and really appreciate the conversation.

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