From Wall Street to the Utility Revolution: The Startup Story That’s Disrupting The Energy Industry with Ben Thomas

He left Morgan Stanley to build not one, but two startups in energy… here’s why.

📌What’s covered in this episode:

- The contrarian reason why building in "boring" industries might be the smartest move for first-time founders

- What Benji had to unlearn from private equity to succeed in startup life

- How to recruit top talent from Microsoft and Goldman without competing on salary

- A fresh model of community-powered pricing that flips the traditional utility system on its head

- The leadership lesson Benji won’t forget

Ben Thomas is the founder and CEO of Gatby, a groundbreaking energy choice platform that uses reverse auctions to help consumers access lower, fixed-rate electricity plans. A former private equity investor with Morgan Stanley and a co-founder of Nutiliti, Ben brings Wall Street savvy to Main Street problems — and is on a mission to create more transparency, fairness, and savings in a confusing utility marketplace.

Learn more at https://gatby.com/group-rate

🌟Join the WAITLIST for The Faithful Founders Collective at https://reinventing-perspectives.kit.com/231f666d82

💛 Thank you for listening in! 😀

P.S. Don’t forget to leave a review! Much appreciated.

Transcript

[00:00:00] The world is generally indifferent if you're not solving a real pain point and they may not care about the cool logo or the cool brand forum. And so that was something that was really interesting when you go from the investing background to being an operator, that we're gonna say no to giving you money and capital.

And so being on the other side, you have to get really used to getting told no like a million times, whether you're raising capital, you're trying to convince. Your smartest, best friends to quit their high paying jobs come work for you. You're talking to their parents who's selling their parents, and why they should come joining at 25.

Your job also is really selling.

It's time to REINVENT tune 

Priscilla: Welcome to the Lessons of Entrepreneurship, the Journey of Reinvention Today. I've got Benji here with me. I'm so excited to have you here. Benji, a lot of founders are first time founders, and you have done this and this is the second time around.

So we're excited to get into the founder's mind the second time around. [00:01:00] I'm just gonna give people a bit of a background. Benji is a founder and CEO of Gatby, which is a groundbreaking energy choice platform. You've gone from Wall Street's private equity, which is a dream for most people to now building that one, but two energy startups.

In this industry that just seems like a very old, very dominant,. How did you know it was time to step away from Wall Street and investing to jump into being a founder and why this industry?

Benji Thomas: Yeah, I guess like there probably, two parts to it. For me I thought, wall Street was awesome. I loved doing energy investing. I was at Morgan Stanley Energy Partners and so you get to see a lot of really great companies. You get to invest with really great management teams.

And it's funny to think about it. I was like 24 at the time. I started utility at 25, but. I think for me, I've always been interested in energy. I grew up in Houston which is the energy capital of the world. My family's in energy. You end up just surrounded by it.

And so I was always passionate about the industry and I think, when you spend enough [00:02:00] time meeting with management teams and, they've discovered really good solutions for problems within the space. It became more obvious to me that, man, it would be really exciting to be on the other side of the table.

. There was a lot I was learning from investing in these companies, et cetera. But I think what I got really excited about was, hey, these are just ordinary people, right? That were able to raise capital, build a team, they saw a problem and then they built a solution for it.

Obviously there's a lot of prestige and status associated with doing private equity, for me I was like, Hey. It'd be really cool to go be an operator. And so that's what really led me, to it at least to leave, Morgan Stanley at the time.

And obviously the energy business, there are a lot of different places where you can, think about energy, right? Whether it's, I. Extracting oil out of the ground or your solar or renewables or your transporting energy. But electricity and infrastructure and utilities is something I'd also spend a lot of time in.

I was very compelled by the uns sexiness of it, I think, there are a lot of really cool, sexy industries out there, I think there are industries that are not as sexy where there are a lot of [00:03:00] problems that go overlooked because, founders don't really want to go build products there.

And so I decided on utilities and I've been in utilities the last five years, both of the companies.

Priscilla: . Yeah, , when I saw that I said utilities. Okay. And utilities. Yeah. Okay. We've gotta talk about this because there's something that we're. Not seeing that someone is seeing that's really important there. I like that you talked about your in-depth knowledge of the industry, which I think sometimes industry seems like you can't think about getting into it because you don't know enough or you don't have enough of a background.

So I'm interested you jump into being an operator. What are the surprising things that you had to either learn or you had to unlearn from the world you come from, 

Benji Thomas: when you're investing in companies, you say no a lot all the time to people, right? You're always like, Hey, no, we thought you had an interesting idea or it was an interesting platform, whatever, but we're gonna say no to giving you money and capital. And so if you on the other side, you have to get really used to getting told no, like a million times.

So that was one big sort of shock. I think the other part of it is, the world Is [00:04:00] generally indifferent if you're not solving a real pain point. And they may not care about the cool logo or the cool brand if it's not solving a real problem for 'em. And so that was something that was really interesting when you go from the investing, background to being an operator so much of.

Your job also is really selling, and so that's also something that's totally different than being an investor. You're not selling as much. You're more focused on evaluating deals, looking for great companies to invest in, et cetera. Whereas when you're an operator or you're starting a company, you're really selling everyone, right?

Whether you're raising capital, you're trying to convince, your smartest, best friends to quit their high paying jobs to come work for you. You're talking to their parents, you're selling their parents on why they should come join you at 25. And all that kind of stuff. And those are some of the biggest, I think, differences between the two jobs at least.

Priscilla: Did you enjoy the process of selling before or was it something that you just had to switch gears? , That shift from now needing to sell is a really big hurdle for a lot of people. So I'm interested, like, how did you approach it?

Benji Thomas: I'm, pretty social guy and so I've always felt [00:05:00] comfortable, meeting new people, getting to know 'em. And so for me, sales is like a natural extension of that, right? When we were starting the company, you spend so much time getting to know, potential customers and it's really just conversational.

I think, it's a learned skill over time, right? Getting people to trust you. To trust that, hey, when you're asking about their problem, that you can actually build something for them. Sales is something that can only really be learned by, reps and getting to know people and doing things and being uncomfortable, if that makes sense.

That's the way I thought about it, 

Priscilla: totally makes sense. I'm interested to know, you're selling your friends and you're saying to them, Hey, you've got a really great job and a really great life, and this has been your dream, but walk away from it and come and join me. That point where you're thinking to yourself, 'cause you don't know if this is gonna be a success or not, you're not sure.

You are hoping and you're committed to it, but you're not sure. What is your thought process in that? Because I think a lot of people get to that point of okay, you need the best people. What can you offer the best people to walk away from [00:06:00] the already good thing that they're in?

Benji Thomas: Yeah. The really challenging part about getting really talented people is that they're already making a lot of money. My co-founders are coming from Microsoft. My other co-founder came from Goldman, and so you can't really just entice them with, dollars.

For me, everything that I've told people that have come and gotten to work with me in my companies is that, hey, you're gonna have a ton of autonomy. You're gonna work on a really. Interesting problem with really impressive people. And more importantly, like just that freedom and independence is something that I think a lot of people really crave.

And so I think, being able to articulate, hey, how can we cross the gap of, not having any customers not having capital. My view was if I can convince them that I'm gonna be able to sell, as hard as I can, and we'll be able to get customers and we'll generate revenue.

All you have to have is a little bit of faith in me. That sort of made it a lot easier to bring people on. And I think the mission of the company has to resonate with folks. And I think that can sometimes be challenging, if you're not SpaceX and you're putting people on Mars, right?

But I think, being able to say, Hey, we're impacting the lives of, hundreds [00:07:00] of thousands of consumers with our product. That actually resonates quite a bit for some folks, right?

Priscilla: So interesting. Now tell us, Benji, because energy, old industry. Not the first thing people think about when they're thinking of jumping into entrepreneurship and being an operator. I'm thinking dominated by governments or big corporations, but the mission you had, maybe you can

speak to that so that , we can follow your story.

Benji Thomas: Yeah, sure. I think for most people, when they think about their utilities, no one's ever been like, utilities are fun, right? Most people generally have, not a great view of monopolies, utilities. Sort of complex billing structures and practices.

And that's a case. And in markets really all over the world, right? You have, areas or countries, where, energy's deregulated and you can actually pick your own energy provider. In the US you have 16 states approximately that have that. And in Texas , you have, 7.2 million people that can pick their own energy provider, right?

Which is awesome. And really what I found was that. A lot [00:08:00] of people really struggled with making an educated choice, and a lot of folks are on really, predatory plans or expensive rates, they don't know how to sift through all the different energy providers, so for some context, there are over 50 energy providers in Texas that you can, choose from, right?

And so those individual providers have tens of plans as well. And so you can start to understand, how complicated and how intimidating it is for, an everyday person to come in and make a educated decision. And so the mission for us was, Hey, how can we take a process that's.

Incredibly, opaque and complicated and make it really simple for consumers to find, an affordable and reliable energy plan. And how can we do it in a way that feels like a modern platform, looks like what you'd expect from, Expedia or Kayak, or Robinhood, et cetera.

And so that's been our mission and we've like really underpinned that, with our features. But that was the goal, electricity expenses are, generally the second most expensive thing, outside of your mortgage and your rent. And so it's something that people look at every month.

And we thought to ourselves, if we can [00:09:00] help people save some money here, that'd be pretty cool.

Priscilla: It's such a powerful mission because , even if you're given the choice, you don't know what you're looking at you. It's just like guesswork. I guess if that one is cheaper, that's the thing with a lot of people and it's that monthly bill that you don't think you can change very much and wow, this is really interesting.

I like that you mentioned Robin Hood. The way Robinhood went into investing and made it something that the average person can understand and have access to? Or maybe I'm just let me know. .

Benji Thomas: . I think from a design perspective they're a great inspiration, You think about the next generation of consumers, You know every sort of class, right? That. Coming up, what is their expectation around, really modern, intuitive interface.

And I think that's one thing, right? It's easy to go in and buy stocks, but I think the second part around democratizing access to trading, right? And building wealth through your investments, That Robin Hood had to similar mission as us, A product that we just launched a few months ago was called Gatby Group Rate.

And our idea there and the novelty around it [00:10:00] was, everyone signs up for electricity, but everyone's doing it by themselves. And so what we said was, we're gonna go to the energy providers and say, Hey, we have 5,000 people right, who are all joining a group together.

And we want you guys as the energy providers to bid your lowest rates and the lowest rate wins, right? And so now you're introducing buying power to a bunch of consumers that were signing up for electricity by themselves, but because they're signing up the same time, now you're getting that group buying power, which lowers the rate materially and drives serious savings.

And so we think, it's what we'd call, the, power to the people approach. If you can get communities together, if you can get people to align together, that actually drives that bulk purchasing power, like Costco is another example, et cetera,

you're getting these bulk savings and so I think Robinhood is a great example of that, right? How do you arm the rebels, like the little guys so that they can compete with these big incumbents or big utility providers that exist in the market, if that makes sense.

Priscilla: Absolutely. I see it's a revolutionary thing for energy. [00:11:00] Having control over your energy is something that hasn't been there since probably people had energy of fire. That was the only way you could control your own energy and people felt really pushed around by.

The forces around energy, especially you think of places where it's very cold and the heating and just feeling helpless to that wow very interesting. Tell us about your first startup. Challenges in hindsight, you can see them better.

, Any top of mind moments of breakthrough that you can speak to.

Benji Thomas: Yeah. So the first company that we started was called Nutiliti. The current one's called Gatby and Nutiliti was really focused around utility, bill Pay, right? The whole idea was, hey, if you have roommates, for example, right? We're gonna help you split the bills for your water, your gas, your electricity, your internet.

And ultimately it's grown a ton. And basically, now Nutiliti's doing utility billing for large property managers. So when renters are moving into a house, for example, it's helping them split [00:12:00] their bills and invoicing them for the water and gas that they're using and consuming.

, There are a lot of lessons, right? Ultimately the company I founded, the second one was actually a spin out of the previous company I started. And one sort of painful lesson is the co-founder dynamic, and how that can break apart if you have different views on vision.

Ultimately, I was really excited about solving, the electricity choice problem for consumers while they were more passionate about this utility billing problem. And ultimately it became obvious that we had to separate and separate the businesses. And that's always gonna be messy.

Anytime you're splitting apart, businesses, some employees are staying with Nutiliti, some people are going Gatby, those kinds of things. And so I think a lesson there is making sure, hey, you're constantly checking in. With your co-founders around, vision, the alignment around that, et cetera.

, Understanding, , the unit economics of your business and making sure those are strong and suitable, ? That allows you to become profitable, ? Understanding, hey, what kind of investors should you raise from, some that are maybe strategic or vc, et cetera,

and these are all sort of common things that, [00:13:00] you can go and hear on really any startup podcast, but those are all very sort of foundational for me between my first company and my second company.

Priscilla: before you went into this, are you listening to every kind of startup podcast? What are you doing? That sort of gives you the confidence to say, okay, I'm ready.

Benji Thomas: Yeah, I probably started listening to more startup podcasts after we had started the actual, the company, because you're trying to like, learn everything at once. 'cause you realize how under-prepared you are, but I think, definitely, they're all the traditional podcasts, right?

Like how I Built This by Guy Raz, that was one that was certainly inspirational for me. Lenny Ruskis podcast, and he's a former PM at Airbnb, and he has this amazing sort of product management podcast that I thought was great. And then one that I'd recommend, really anyone that's thinking about starting a company to listen to is a podcast called Founders Podcast.

And this is a podcast that David Sra puts on. And it's amazing because it goes through all the biographies. Of, founders really. Patagonia, red Bull, Disney Tesla, all these amazing [00:14:00] companies. And, Dyson's another great one. And you learn about, hey, what were the trials and tribulations that these founders went through, what did they think in their eyes after they did their biographies or autobiographies, what led to their success or what were some of the failures?

And so those are things that, were super helpful for me as I was starting my company. And I continue to listen too.

Priscilla: the first challenge you mentioned, I think is a very common one where. What you both see as the business, if you have a co-founder, can be very different. And it is not only business, you see it in any kind of partnership. You see the music groups, you see it in, different social spaces where the idea of where are we going becomes separate and then you've got to go in different ways.

Second time around knowing that. The relationship between the co-founder and the mission and the vision. What are you doing actively to keep the vision for yourselves, both of you and the entire team as well?

Benji Thomas: for Gatby for example, I'm the sole board member, so ultimately I get to say, Hey, this is where we're headed, this is what I believe, whether right or wrong, it's not [00:15:00] really a decision by committee, and so that would say that was the biggest sort of tactical thing for the second company that I focused on of, Hey, you know what, we're gonna just.

Have myself. This is gonna be the team that we're gonna build around, right? This is where we're headed. Obviously, you know that things can change, but ultimately, hey, there's. Not a decision by committee, which complicates a lot of the decision making process, right? And so it's true to what I believe, we should be headed and where we go next.

And I think that is probably the biggest thing. But I would also say, with the communication, , in any relationship, in any partnership, relationships with your employees, your founding team, communication is so important and so really, every week communicating, Hey, this is where we are.

This was the past, this is where we're headed. Here's what's changing, here's what's not changing. Making sure everyone's still aligned. There's swimming the same direction, I think is so critical. And communication is such a big part of that with your partners and employees and team members , 

Priscilla: how much of an influence do investors have in this process? Because I'm thinking if you've got the co-founder and then you've got the investors, and then you've gotta manage all those expectations and all [00:16:00] those opinions and directions from your experience. Yeah. 

Benji Thomas: Yeah, it's a great question. For me, especially at Gatby, having really aligned investors, before we even raised capital of saying, Hey. This is where we're going. If you're highly convicted in this just like we are right, then hey, come on into the cap table.

We're gonna let you invest. But if you're not, , we don't want you to invest, right? Because we, you really do want that perfect alignment. And investors are super great. Really at both my companies, they've been spectacular. And a lot of it's been because, they have the gray hairs, right?

I was , 25 when I started the Nutiliti and I was. 28 when I started Gatby. There is a lot of life and a lot of painful lessons that I haven't been able to experience yet. But they have, and so they've been a really great sounding board when we're thinking through hiring decisions, we're thinking through go to market strategy, we're thinking through building scalable systems for our firm.

And how do you, as you grow revenue and as you grow your employee count, how do you make sure that culture stays the same? And they're a really great resource bank to draw on. A lot of them are within the energy industry, so they're able to give us really good context around what's happening in the [00:17:00] market, right?

Hey, what are some things that, perhaps myself or my team members are missing that they see in their day-to-day that can improve our product, right? Could be better for consumers, could be better for the overall, offering of Gatby. And so that's, been awesome. I can't tell you.

You know how wonderful it's been having really great and supportive investors that understand a lot about our business because, I have a lot of friends that have raised for investors , they're founders as well, that have raised for investors where, incentives were misaligned.

And that's a really painful experience. I have a buddy that got fired, from his company. He was VC backed in Austin, and he got fired and that was really painful, and it really illustrates the power of having, really great investors behind you and why being, perhaps more deliberate or slower is really important.

Priscilla: that's a gem right there because I think sometimes when you haven't done it, you think it's just about the money and the experience of someone, but understanding those finer things that can really tear relationship apart and really being aligned on what it is that you're trying to do.

So thanks for telling us that Benji , as a founder, you're learning at the same time. You're [00:18:00] executing and you're thinking ahead. How are you balancing those three things and what are you doing? Because I'm thinking, what does the day of a founder look like or the week of a founder look like in terms of those three activities?

'cause . That's a tricky thing to balance.

Benji Thomas: Yeah it's really tricky. I think the really nice part about, my job is that, once you have a really great team that you delegated a lot of really great execution work too, and you trust 'em. It's like a tank. You've got different, people driving the tank, looking up.

All these different sort of things, all working together in a cohesive way. For us it all starts with the customer. And so , I'm trying to do customer interviews, every other day and ask them about our roadmap.

Hey, is this a feature you would use? Why or why not? It's asking about our current, kind of product offering, Hey, what do you think about it? And that really also helps inform what's happening from a business perspective. I spend a lot of time looking at the data.

Of, Hey, how many people are coming to our website and how many people are signing up for electricity plans? Could we have made it easier for someone like, we'll go in and watch user sessions. Hey, what buttons were people clicking on? Should we have provided more detail or [00:19:00] context there?

And so it's really creating the intersection between, our product roadmap and what customers are doing and experiencing live. And the past is the data analysis we do to say, Hey, how many people are signing up for electricity through our platform?

What are our customer support KPIs looking like? All those kinds of things. The present is basically managing, Hey, what is our pipeline of sales? What do our marketing channels look like? How are we doing there? Maybe. It's investor correspondence, right?

Maybe it's doing one-on-ones with, team members. Maybe it's doing a new hire, recruiting, right? Which, we just brought on a new engineer, right? It's a meeting a new potential engineer candidate in Chicago, right? So spending time there and then thinking ahead part, happens in the background of, okay, where is Gatby in our lifecycle?

What does our roadmap look like for the next, three years, right? How can we continue to deliver more value? To our customers, are there new markets we wanna expand to? And so it's really hard to balance, I think at any given moment, maybe you're spending a lot of time doing the past analysis, the present of the future, it's never really know if you can hit that equilibrium.

But that's the way we [00:20:00] generally try to think about this stuff.

Priscilla: Yeah. And thank you for sharing that because it's something that you don't know. Am I focusing too much on one thing or am I doing the right thing? Am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing? What are other people doing? You ask yourself those questions and I think it's interesting that you mentioned that.

The first one is the recruiting. If you've got the right people, then that allows you to be able to try to juggle that easier. The first time you're hiring. How are you approaching it? Are you going after people you already know? Are you going into the general market?

Benji Thomas: Yeah. The best candidates we brought on are people that, we've known from our network, that are trusted and known, and we know, hey they're excited about our mission, right? They're one degree separated.

I think we always try to, either our network or our friends network or people that have worked with these folks professionally. And then obviously of course, we use the same sort of job hosting websites you guys know, but. We have to be more diligent there, ?

Of, Hey, can we talk to some of your former, bosses, right? Reference checks, and tell us more about yourself. And it's more thoughtful because obviously you're trying to, get that same [00:21:00] level of detail that we would've gotten from someone in our network, right? But, we're looking for, people that are excited about what we're doing,

people that are passionate, ultimately. This isn't Goldman Sachs, right? And so if all you care about is prestige and status, like this is really not the place, ? Ultimately, you have to be excited about delivering really great products for consumers at scale. And we like people that are honest, all the sort of great traits,

honest, kind, hardworking we love people that love being outdoors. We're big skiers. We do an annual ski trip. We always ask jokingly, Hey, do you know how to ski? And if someone says no, we say, we'll teach you how to ski. We love people that enjoy the outdoors.

We love people that love live music. And generally we look for folks like that, and ideally they come through our network. But over time, we've brought people, from, other places too.

Priscilla: So what's the culture at Gatby? I'm getting the form of the culture through the recruiting. If someone was to ask you like what's the culture here?

Benji Thomas: Yeah. Listen, I think the way I hope it's described it's a really fun place to work with people that care about the work we're doing, but also, their colleagues and team members. It's a tight-knit group. The culture at Gatby, I think is defined by, working on, unsexy complicated [00:22:00] problems that drive material savings to consumers and having a lot of fun doing it too. And I think, you can see with our logo, the space cowboy and our playful, tone is that, that's what we're trying to design.

We're trying to make something that's really, not fun for people, fun in its own right. And so that's the way , I like to describe it, the way I think about it at least, and certainly how I hope, our employees describe it too.

Priscilla: , that's wonderful. People say the founder, you're setting the culture and it's easy to hear that. But what does it look like for you, the founder? If you are thinking, I'm setting the culture.

Benji Thomas: longer hair for sure. , When I was in private equity, my hair was way shorter. I was just messing around. But I think it's embodying sort of our values, right? , I sit at the same desks with all my teammates,

there's no, nice cushy office for me, it's a really flat structure and we have a role that's like the best idea wins. You could be, a junior level employee, but if you have the best idea on what's gonna serve our consumer better,

it's gonna make our company better, then, we'll do it. And I think, , for me, trying to embody sort of our core values, [00:23:00] right? But also, getting to know every single one of our employees too, and learning, Hey, how can I be a better leader? And leveling up as well has been a, a big part of it, I think.

Priscilla: What's been your biggest leadership lesson?

Benji Thomas: Oh, I think the biggest leadership lesson for me is that, I. Try to find what someone is uniquely qualified to do. They may not even know it, but look at where they're delivering the most value to your company. And even if it's not their job title, try to find a way to start positioning them to really focus on delivering that key skill.

I think there have been people that have come in here, hang for example, he used to be. In our growth, team basically doing business development. And what we discovered was he was really interested in the operations of what we do and really the product ops and really linking the customer journey to building, products and the roadmap and feature development.

And so he has this amazing textbook resume that makes him an amazing salesperson and an amazing BD guy. But what we found was that not only was he more passionate about ops, but [00:24:00] also he was more uniquely qualified to be successful there. And so I think being able to take a step back and be like, Hey, sit down with that employee and say, Hey, I think you'd be better at this.

You're doing this in your spare time. Can you confirm what I'm thinking here? And then, their eyes spark up like, Hey, yeah, I've always been pigeonholed to this role because of my past experience, but actually, you know what, I'm gonna be better at this. And allowing them to make that transition is really remarkable.

That's been an amazing sort of lesson for me is when someone comes in, I. They may already be good at something, but there's always potential that they could be great at something else. And being able to give them the ability to move laterally within the organization to go pursue that skill has really been an awesome piece for me.

That's been great.

Priscilla: sounds like a really great place to work. I think for the founders that are listening, I think they've heard about selling. You've gotta be to sell. The idea to sell to the consumer, to sell to investors, to sell to the people. Recruiting, hiring the best people, allowing them to do what they do best and what they enjoy, and creating a great culture that continues [00:25:00] to help people to be motivated to do what it is that you do.

Benji, what is it that if you are looking out into the market, what are you excited about right now?

Benji Thomas: the thing I'm really the most excited about is really more people just being more animated about having the power to change their electricity bill, the energy industry right now is going through this amazing revolution, right?

You've got now batteries coming into the grid, you've got solar, you've got electric vehicles, right? And they're gonna be so many new sort of personalized plans available to consumers across the world, ? Hey, if you have an electric vehicle here's a plan designed for that. Hey, if you're using.

2000 kilowatt hours, here's a plan for that, right? And so I think as the sort of electricity sort of world, increases in terms of complexity, in terms of all, these really amazing consumer offerings, right? Like smart thermostats, et cetera. Being able to be that trustee, Sherpa or guide to consumers as they make these sort of really critical decisions around their home energy.

That's what gets me really excited. I think everyone talks about [00:26:00] energy and they talk about ai and the fact that we get to be at the frontier of that and helping, homeowners really take control of their power. I think it's gonna be an awesome decade and years to come.

Priscilla: I'm excited just listening to you talk about it because I hadn't even thought about the EVs and, the way the world is moving. So really, just is groundbreaking energy choice for consumers. So I'm excited to have you and I'm excited to share this message with people. Thank you so much, Benji.

To the audience, if you could please go to ga b.com. It'll be linked in the description slash group slash rate where you can learn more about this and take control of your energy. Benji, what do you wish I'd asked that I didn't ask?

Benji Thomas: Oh, you know what? . Probably, how can communities engage each other to lower their energy bills? I think that's something that most people don't think about. And I think that's, something that I would say is not just in energy. As the world moves towards, more social commerce, what other sort of places can consumers band together? Obviously we have Gatby group rate helping people join together to lower their [00:27:00] energy bills. Something I'd say is. What other places can communities get together to lower the cost of goods, right?

As you deal with this world that's, experiencing crazy inflation, what other places can folks really, leverage the power of their community to increase savings in their everyday lives. That's something I think that I certainly think about a lot now especially as the world changes.

And that's something that is not a traditional question but something that I certainly have been wrestling with a bit more.

Priscilla: Oh, thank you for that. It's been great. Thank you so much, Benji.

Benji Thomas: Awesome. Thank you