How I built a $1M-a-month solar company in Iowa from scratch.

I built a solar company in Iowa from nothing to a million dollars a month in gross revenue. I did it at age 20. The plan worked because I spotted a blue ocean market. Iowa had only two or three other solar companies operating, and they were all running outdated methods. I started doing virtual sales into the state from Arizona, calling instead of door-knocking. Calling into Iowa was unproven. Nobody else was running it. But the numbers came back strong, fast. That told me the demand was there, just untouched. So I flew out and layered the proven channel (doors) on top of the virtual play that was already working. Two weeks in, I’d made $40,000 personally. Total with my friend, $100,000. That’s when I knew I could build a real company. So I broke my lease, spent my bank account, recruited 15 people to move with me, and built it out. This is how it actually went. And what it cost.

How did I end up in Iowa?

Direct answer: I was running virtual sales for a solar company in Arizona at $25,000 a month for seven months. Then we started running virtual into Iowa, where almost no one was selling solar that way. The numbers came in strong from a channel nobody else was using. That’s when I realized Iowa was the real opportunity.

After I left my first sales job (a separate article, that chapter has its own lessons), I went deep on solar. The market was supposed to be saturated. Everyone said you couldn’t make real money there anymore. The first door I knocked turned into an appointment. The second prospect bought a deal that same week. So I doubled down.

For seven months I sold solar from a phone in Arizona. About $25,000 a month, every month. That’s $175,000 over the run. Good money for a 20-year-old with a phone.

Then I started running virtual into Iowa. The whole solar industry was on doors. Calling was the channel almost nobody was using. But the Iowa numbers came back strong from the very first weeks. That was the signal. There was real demand here, and the existing solar companies in the state weren’t capturing it. There were only two or three of them, all running outdated methods.

That was the moment I started studying the state. Spread-out houses. Long driveways. Older homeowners. The kind of place where someone showing up in person would be just as effective as someone calling, maybe more so. Doors were the proven channel everywhere else in solar. If virtual was already winning here from a channel that was unproven, doors layered on top would compound it.

So I made the company owner an offer. Let me fly out, knock doors in person, and run a blitz for two weeks. He said yes.

Why did the Iowa blitz work?

Direct answer: Iowa was a blue ocean market with two or three outdated solar companies in it. I’d already proven the demand with virtual sales. Adding doors (the proven channel everywhere else in solar) on top of the virtual play was the layering that won.

Most people miss the setup. Iowa wasn’t an ignored market because doors had been abandoned by the industry. The industry was still on doors. Iowa was ignored because the few solar companies in the state were running old playbooks and nobody’d come in to compete with them.

I came in through the unproven channel first. Calling worked. That was the proof of demand. Once I knew the demand was real, the obvious next step was to run the proven channel on top. Doors had been the high-conversion channel in solar for years. Layering doors over a virtual play that was already producing meant I’d hit the same homes from two angles.

That’s the strategic version. The on-the-ground version was simpler. I flew out. I knocked. I made $40,000 to $50,000 personally in two weeks. My buddy did about the same. $100,000 between us in two weeks. That’s when I knew I had to build this out as a real company.

The real lesson here isn’t about cost or scale. It’s about blue ocean territory and channel layering. Find a market the big players have ignored. Prove demand cheaply with an unproven channel. Then bring the proven channel in on top to dominate.

I wrote up the strategic version of this story in the blue ocean framework article. This article is the operating story behind it.

What did it take to scale to a million a month?

Direct answer: a broken lease, an emptied bank account, 15 people convinced to relocate, and an office in Cedar Rapids.

Once the proof was in, I had to commit. The half-measure version of this story is “I tried it for two weeks and went home.” That version doesn’t build a company.

The full-commit version went like this. I broke my lease in Arizona. I spent everything in my bank account on the move. I called 15 of the strongest salespeople I knew and pitched them on relocating to Iowa with me. They came. I rented an office in Cedar Rapids. I bought the systems we needed. I built the org chart. I ran payroll.

Within a few months we were doing close to a million dollars a month in gross revenue. We had a real team. Real clients on the ground. Real solar projects going in the ground every week. The whole thing was happening from a town most of my old crew had never heard of.

Recruiting 15 people to move was the hardest part. People don’t pack up their lives for an idea. They pack up for a track record. So I led with the receipts. Two weeks. $100,000. Here’s the math. Here’s why Iowa works. Here’s what your year looks like if we run this together. Once the first three said yes, the rest were easier.

What did a million a month actually break?

Direct answer: the systems underneath the revenue.

The revenue was real. But here’s the thing nobody tells you about scaling fast. Growing fast doesn’t break your revenue. It breaks the systems holding the revenue together.

Hire too fast and you hide weak processes. The salespeople pick up the slack and the cracks don’t show. Move too fast and you skip the slow careful work of building a team that runs without you. The company moves but it moves on willpower. Take the willpower out and the company starts to wobble.

Those two years showed me the cost of velocity. The numbers looked great on paper. But the back office never caught up. The systems never fully matured. The team got bigger faster than the team got better. And the operator (me) was holding everything together by being in the seat full-time.

Eventually, that catches up to you. There are only so many hours in a day. Only so many fires one person can put out before the next one starts.

What would I do differently today?

Direct answer: I’d run the same opportunity with AI doing the work first, and only hire people once the systems were solid.

This is the lesson that compounded all the way through to what I do now. I run a marketing agency called Dynamite Growth. The whole operating philosophy of that company comes from what Iowa taught me.

We start with what AI can run. Lead-gen pipelines. Research. Creative ideation. Content drafts. Everything that doesn’t need a human gets handled by AI first. Only after the systems are solid do we add people. That way the systems are leading the team, not the other way around.

This is what I now call The Operator-First AI Stack. The principle is simple. The systems should grow faster than the headcount. AI is the leverage that makes it possible. The team is what stays in the seat for the calls AI can’t handle.

If I were running the Iowa solar play today, I’d build the AI lead-gen first. I’d build the routing and follow-up automation first. I’d build the brief-and-onboard system first. Then I’d add salespeople. The first 15 hires would walk into a system that was already producing leads, not one they were responsible for keeping alive.

So what happened to Prodigy Power?

Direct answer: it ran. Hard. For two years. And those two years taught me the most important lesson I carry into every operating decision today.

Prodigy Power was real. We did the revenue. The team relocated. The trucks rolled. Solar got installed. Iowa homeowners got their power bills cut. That part of the story is true.

The aftermath taught me what scaling-fast costs. I rolled into the next chapter (a different industry, different mistakes, different lessons) with a calibrated sense of what hard scaling actually looks like. That next chapter is its own article.

What I will say is this. Every operating decision I make today comes from those two years. Start with what AI can run. Hire only when systems are solid. Don’t let the team get bigger than the systems behind them. Let the math, not the willpower, be the thing that holds the company together.

If you want to see that philosophy in action on a current project, that’s what we run inside Dynamite Growth. The agency surface lives at dynamitegrowth.co.

FAQ

How long did the Iowa run last?

Two years of full-throttle operation, hitting a million dollars a month in gross revenue at the peak.

Did you keep the company?

The Prodigy Power era ended for reasons that are their own story. The short answer is that the year showed me the cost of scaling that fast, and I made the call to step out of that vehicle and into a different one. That’s a separate article.

Could you do this again today, in another industry?

Yes. The play works in any blue ocean market: few competitors, outdated methods, where you can prove demand cheaply with an unproven channel and then layer the proven channel on top to dominate. AI compresses the recruit-to-revenue cycle even further. The whole front office can be running before anyone gets hired.

What was the hardest part of recruiting 15 people to relocate?

Convincing people to bet on the math instead of the geography. Most of them had never been to Iowa. Most of them had families or leases or routines back home. The thing that broke through was the receipts. Two weeks. $100,000. A real city. A real office. A real team forming on the other side of the move. The first three yeses were the hardest. The next twelve were the easiest.