My Life at Palmetto: Machias Schoen

Machias Schoen, known as Chi, is Palmetto’s Head of Comfort Plan. He recently sat down with the communications team to share about his life at Palmetto and beyond.

How long have you been at Palmetto? What is your role?

I've been at Palmetto since April 1 — April Fool's Day — of 2019. When I joined, I think there were 40 employees, and we were all in a cinder block room attached to a brewery. That was fun. Since I've been with Palmetto, my role has changed a lot. 

Early days, I helped lead a variety of operational functions as we grew our platformed approach to solar, distribution, and deployment. I did that for maybe three, three and a half years. 

In the spring of 2023, I jumped over as we started Palmetto LightReach, our consumer finance product. I basically raised my hand on that one and was a bit of a jack of all trades: helped define the product specification and did a lot of the early growth initiatives partnering with contractors and sales teams and point of sale platforms. 

Then, about a year and a half ago, I pivoted into my role focused on strategy and innovation where I think about two things: One, how can we keep up ahead of the curve in terms of the product offerings we have. And, two, how do we diversify our revenue channels? Today we have a primarily B-to-B-to-C model. How do we go find new, creative, lower cost channels that are a bit more durable?

I've been spending the bulk of my time on non-solar product offerings. That's putting together the fund and product framework for our HVAC and heat pump product that will also support standalone storage, standalone generator, hot water systems, etc. That’s led me to my brand new role as Head of Comfort Plan.

What does a typical day for the Head of Comfort Plan look like?

I'm a big “say yes” person. There are no conversations or opportunities too big or too small. A lot of my job is correspondence and engagement with potential partners. That's across the HVAC vertical, corporate partners, solar folks with interesting ideas, builders, build-to-rent fund owners and developers, etc. It’s a lot of partnership-focused discussion, trying to understand where we could fit in or differentiate our product through a new channel or a slight tweak to an existing channel. At a super high level, it's probably spent 50/50 on growth initiatives and programmatic development, making sure we have the architecture and framework to support growth and scale over time. 

It's a lot of context switching. As I said, I started my career largely on the operational side, and I really credit that grounding in operations with being able to do my job well. You have to understand that background context. Then, you can go and have a lot of interesting conversations and get really creative in how you think about the business and where the business can go. So a lot of context switching, which is exhausting sometimes, but it's also pretty refreshing. There's always something new and interesting around the corner.

What excited you about joining Palmetto? 

One thing that appealed to me about Palmetto from the jump was a steadfast decision to always think about the industry differently than the rest. And — hopefully I won’t get in trouble for saying this — sometimes that is to our detriment, right? There have been times when the easy path is the easy path for a reason, other people have a lot of success on it, and we took a different path. But I think largely it's been a massively positive piece for us, that sort of stubbornness to always take a different view. 

I think that's a big reason why we're positioned how we’re positioned today. We’ve stayed agile. We took a different road to growth. We've been stubborn and determined, even though it was a little painful at certain points. And through those ups and downs, that's still the piece that gets me excited and gets our partners and our consumers excited as well.

What keeps you here? What are you excited about?

Two things. One is what I just referenced. I get to come in every day and, to a degree, look at a white piece of paper and say, “Wouldn't it be cool if X,” and have a good amount of time, autonomy, and empowerment to go chase that idea down. Our company has retained a culture that supports that. That is very unique. I've worked for startups most of my career and I always say to new hires: Treasure those moments when you're at a startup with an interesting idea and it's going well, because it's so rare. In the moment, you're like, damn, I'm working my butt off and I'm tired and I'm stressed. But, when it's working and you're growing and you're having fun and things seem to be clicking, that's magic in a bottle. You’ve got to take a step back and recognize that.

Secondly is that no one's figured the space out. I've been doing this since 2012; I'll be in my 15th year in the clean tech, solar, storage, distributed generation space and — just no one's figured it out. There's been a lot of really smart, really talented people that have put a lot of energy and a lot of brain power and a lot of money into it and it's still not there. 

I'm fiercely competitive, probably to a fault, and truly care about climate change and want to leave a better place for my kid. So that keeps me in it. That keeps me energized. It's a really complex problem to solve and no one's got there, you know? We haven't commoditized this thing. We haven't reached the point where it's the default for homeowners. So that, for better or worse, keeps me fired up.

What excites you most about the impact Palmetto might have on the world?

Solar is what brought me in. Solar is an excellent vehicle to blend the hippie-dippie, wonky, policy stuff with consumer product packaging and the business world.

Another thing I liked when I came over was that open acknowledgement — I’m stealing Chris [Kemper, Palmetto founder and CEO]'s quote — it's okay to be a capitalist and an environmentalist. Those things are complimentary. I love that approach. 

I really like the approach we're taking. Despite solar being this excellent gateway, it's not always the best product for that customer. I really like the gentler, consumer led approach that we're pursuing here. It's a right-product-right-time mentality, as opposed to, “It's gotta be X, gotta be Y, or gotta be Z.” It’s more holistic, more spot solution focused, which is super hard to pull off. No one's pulled it off. I get excited by that challenge. I don't think it's a broadening of our mission, but it's a broadening of the tools at our disposal to achieve that mission.

What do you do outside of the office that keeps you fueled and ready to go?

I don't know if it keeps you fueled and ready to go, but I have a six year old, so I basically spend all my waking hours, when I'm not working, hanging out with her. It's summer vacation, so that means she's knocking on my door every 30 seconds to see if I'm still working. I love hanging out with my kid. 

I live in the Pacific Northwest and moved here basically for the outdoors. I love to bike. I love to fly fish. In the winter I love to ski. I ski raced in high school and college. So, love to get up to the mountain. Anything that gets me outside with my family, that's what gives me energy, even if it's also draining all my energy at the same time.