#25: Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments)

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:00:00]:
There aren't yet the systems in place to give people the data that they need, but they're asking the questions. And that's where I think the utilities really have an opportunity to turn around and look at things slightly different, which is what data do we have that really can help advance us into this carbon neutrality world? And how can we help our customers get where they wanna go? Because people wanna do it. People want to make change. It's the systems that are stopping people from making change.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:30]:
Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland. I'm your host, Jeffrey Stern, And today, we are talking sustainability with Laura Steinbrink. Laura is the CEO and founder of Brilliancee, and she is also the managing partner at Emerald Built Environments, where she spent the last decade driving environmental change and ecological and sustainability initiatives spanning heavy industry to retail, housing, commercial, education, medical facilities, roads, bridges, and other infrastructure. We cover everything from that macro level infrastructure work she's doing through Emerald Built Environments, to the micro level behavioral changes spurred on by Brilliancy, which is bridging the gap between utility companies and consumers by giving people access to their own energy consumption data and facilitating the relationship between utility companies and the people using them. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I learned quite a lot along the way. I hope you all enjoy it as well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:48]:
So energy and sustainability are are just these topics that are universal in their importance. And I think something on average that we just all kinda take for granted on a daily basis, and so I am excited to have you on, Lauren, and just to hear your story and to take some time to think a little bit about energy.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:02:08]:
Awesome. Well, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:10]:
Yeah. So I I'd love to start. I know you're you've kind of been working on a few different projects in this space of sustainability and energy, but just kinda take us through your your inspiration and and impetus for for getting involved in this space. You know, what what kind of, you know, trigger that desire to to start something in it, and we can we can build from there.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:02:31]:
Well, I'll try to give you the the short answer, not starting at preschool, but rather starting in 2,006. I find myself having evolved out of my really first start up venture, which was in the nonprofit space, Cleveland Bridge Builders, where I've been its founding executive director. And in 2006, I was the community relations person at University Hospitals in a brand new entrepreneurial position, which, you know, all of my mentors, advisors had told me I'm pretty entrepreneurial. It should be good for you, start up position inside a big organization, you know, but look at fun. And on about the 3rd or 4th day of that engagement, the leaders of the organization went down to city hall to announce what was referred to as vision 2010, which was the building campaign that led to Simon Cancer Center, the Yahoo! Medical Center, the redo of the emergency room, and all of the ancillary, projects that happened there. So soon after that arrived the postcard of many, I don't know, 500, a 1000 postcards from case students all addressed to doctor Rothstein, who at that point in time was president of University Hospitals Case Medical Center, the main campus. And we're basically saying you need to build green, sustainable wind turbines, solar panels. And I was given the opportunity in that community relations role to figure it out.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:03:53]:
What does it mean to be sustainable in 2,006? And I say that I wrote the business case for sustainability that then got implemented on those building projects. So that's my foray into it. While I was doing the research for writing the business case for sustainability, I quickly learned that this thing called lead consulting was needed in this marketplace. I met people on the West Coast, expats from Cleveland, by the way, who were doing it and said, okay. Well, I can do that too. And I got my lead accreditation. I I wound up going back to school to get my MBA in sustainable business. And job 1 led to the organization you now know today as Emerald Built Environments, which is 13, 14 years old.

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:42]:
Alright. What what does it mean to be sustainable?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:04:45]:
So sustainability means a lot of things or sustainable means a lot of things to many different people. But I think that common definition is endurance and the ability to preserve the resources for future generations. So if we're talking financial sustainability, it's an organization that's strong and healthy and has resources that are gonna carry on, not living paycheck to paycheck. Right? And for those focused on environmental sustainability, it means doing no harm, less harm, or restoring the earth so that our future generations have a place to live.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:20]:
You you mentioned, you know, that's kind of the the understanding at the time. Have you found that sustainability has evolved as a as a term, like denotationally over the last few years?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:05:30]:
So it's interesting when you started us off, you said that sustainability energy are, like, universal. And I would say no. I mean, sure. Maybe we need energy to live our lives today, but sustainability is still not the universally adopted concept practice level of importance to many. It's gotten better, and I've seen a lot more willingness of all types to accept an urgency around looking at our environmental footprint and as humans today, our performance to try to make some change, but, we're still not

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:07]:
Not universal.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:06:08]:
I wish it was, but it's not.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:09]:
Yeah. I wish it was too. I'm very much of, I guess, it is an opinion that that solving for the environment really kind of supersedes all these other problems that we spend a lot of time arguing about societally, like politics and religion and just other societal issues. It's kinda like analogous to personal health where you you just stop thinking about most of your other day to day problems if your physical health deteriorates.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:06:35]:
Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:36]:
And it it kind of supersedes all else because other problems ultimately don't matter if you're not around to work on them. And I feel like the analogous with the Earth is if we don't have an inhabitable Earth, all these other problems that we spend a lot of our time ultimately on is kind of rendered a lot less important.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:06:52]:
Yeah. Well, and you're right. And it is. And there's, you know, increasing science and scientific evidence out there to suggest that the urgency needs to, you know, be taken seriously at this point in time. So opportunities.

Jeffrey Stern [00:07:07]:
So tell us about how you've kind of worked through some of those opportunities with Emerald Built Environments. What what is the work that you're actually doing there?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:07:13]:
So what we're doing today is at Emerald in Emerald Built Environments, we work primarily with building owners. There are architects, engineers, contractors, and operations teams to help them set and achieve sustainability goals for buildings or spaces. Spaces meaning parks or neighborhoods or, you know, larger development footprints. And what we're normally tasked with doing is some level of assessment of the project that is underway, be it a new construction, major renovation, or ongoing operations of a footprint of buildings, a portfolio, and helping them assess where they are and where where do they wanna go based on the organizational objectives or sustainable goals for the business, their carbon neutrality goals, increasingly as part of that equation. The performance of the people, if it's particularly if it's a work environment, many corporations are changing the way they look at workplace. But we do really 4 things. Listions, listen, and strategize. So where are you today? Where do you wanna be in the future? Create evaluations and plans for how to get there.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:08:22]:
We implement them, so we have a whole engineering team as part of our company so we can help, you know, implement different strategies, design strategies and testing and verification at the very end of the project, especially if it's involving some sort of renovation or new construction. So we can test and verify that the projects met the objectives that they were seeking. Many times, it shows up in a building certification, such as a lead certification or Energy Star or Enterprise Green Communities if it's residential. But, basically, that's what we do, set and achieve sustainability goals.

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:57]:
Are those goals ultimately coming from the the customers that you're working with, or how much of it is from your direction onto the clients that you're working with?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:09:07]:
So, increasingly, it's coming from within where organizations have identified an opportunity for a number of reasons to achieve a higher performance on their building. Sometimes it's straight up understanding of energy and energy costs and risk mitigation around future cost of energy or wanting to save energy from its existing portfolio. Increasingly, it's around the health and wellness of employees. So our corporate clients are coming to us looking for different building certifications, such as well building or fit well, which are really focused on the interior spaces, indoor air quality, and amenities that support health and wellness, such as the meditation room or the lactation room or the fitness center or the health and wellness policies that pay for things like flu shots and otherwise, paternity leave, maternity leave, all of those kind of elements. And, also, it's coming from what I'll say the finance stack. So whatever pieces of a project's financial equation are increasingly having some sort of sustainable or energy requirement that we can help them document and prove that they achieved.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:17]:
The idea of tracking all of this information and and kind of gauging improvement over time. I I'm hearing you, but it feels like this really complicated thing. Like, how do you actually, from an energy consumption perspective, you know, dealing with a a building, for example, go through the process of, you know, here's the baseline of energy consumption, considering, you know, water, electricity, construction, like, all these things, and, you know, compare that to the goal that that you're trying to achieve with the client and ultimately measure that and and hold hold the project accountable?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:10:53]:
So the the short answer is we use modeling a lot, software modeling, to prove out the anticipated savings of something. So if we're dealing with a new build or a major renovation where you're just gonna gut rehab this entire building or you're building from ground up, there are software programs out there that you can put the building characteristics into against a baseline, which is some version of a code related minimum quality standard building that's gonna get you to code requirements. And then elements like the, efficiency of the heating and cooling system or the additional installation that you have in the roof and the walls, your ventilation system, the controls that you have, all of those elements become a piece of the software inputs that then spit out and you're anticipated to save 10%, 15%, 20% over the baseline. That's one way. The other way is if you've got an existing portfolio, we simply take your energy performance the last 12 months or 24 or 36, some, you know, period of time in history, plug them into, again, more software programs, which can then take the anticipated design changes that you're going to make, tell you where you're spending your energy, and where you might go forward to create, like, a capital improvement plan. That's something that we do often for portfolios or existing buildings is where do I start? I want to be more energy efficient. Help me understand how we do that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:20]:
Is there in kind of the implementation or or the rollout of these plans, is it often just like a reorganization of processes, or is there technology that, you know, didn't exist 10, 15 years ago that can be put in place now to to materially make a difference from an energy perspective?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:12:38]:
First of all, let me just close again. I have a political science degree in MBA, but I have engineers on my team. So I'm I'm gonna try to give you layman's to to volunteer around then. There's engineers listening. They're probably rolling their eyes into their back of the head. But the short answer is all of the elements that go into a building or a place that uses energy, there is a different technology that could be available to it that might be new today, might have been new new 5 years ago that could be improved or enhanced. For example, we I mean, we had insulation in old buildings 30 years ago, but it might have an r value of 2, Where if we know we're doing you know, 2 is not high. So we know we're doing a renovation and we wanna take that interior wall structure out or exterior wall, blow it in, you can get more insulation in there to that existing envelope, which is gonna make it tighter, perform better, and keep the hot out and the cooled in, you know, when you or vice versa.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:13:35]:
Heating in, cooling in, you know, when you're when you want it, keep it where you want it to be.

Jeffrey Stern [00:13:40]:
Right. Right. Are are you ultimately optimistic or pessimistic about, you know, the the more macro path to sustainability?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:13:48]:
I am much more optimistic today than I was 18 months ago. And, we started getting phone calls 12, 15 months ago from what I'll call subsidiaries into the automotive and aerospace industry who needed to be sure that what they were doing to their buildings was going to align with the parent organization's carbon neutrality goals. And when I see it dribbling down and down the supply chain, to me, that means it's coming for everybody. That's, like, one piece, and we are seeing it in our projects. New questions being asked. Most projects now are evaluating solar where, especially in our region in Cleveland, Ohio, 2 years ago, they were not. It was the special ones that were investigating solar. We're seeing solar occurring at residential locations.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:14:41]:
We're seeing it happening in the mush market, you know, municipal university health, that kind of thing. We're also seeing it on corporations and, you know, real commitment to we need to do this to meet our performance goals.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:56]:
Right. That is that's good to hear.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:14:59]:
Yeah. And and here in in, like, Northeast Ohio versus we we do work internationally. And so we have clients over, you know, call it over the pond who've been, you know, they achieved some pretty high numbers of efficiencies against the baseline, you know, 50, 60%. Like, we're here, you know, you maybe your 10, 15% better than baseline, and you think you're having a good day. So they clearly are outpacing us, but it's trickling down. And Yeah. That I'll just footnote to say was happening 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years ago when the political climate wasn't necessarily what it is today in the United States. So that's why I said I'm, you know, more excited than ever because I do think the political climate will align policies and finance opportunities with the outcomes we would like to see in the spaces we affect.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:54]:
Infrastructure has been a popular word recently, and as we're considering the the largest infrastructure bill in in really the history of the country.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:16:01]:
Mhmm.

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:02]:
I love to just kinda take stock of the current situation, if you will. And and from an energy perspective, you know, what does what does it look like today? How is our how is our energy system organized? And yeah. That's a that's a far enough question there.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:16:17]:
Well, so let's let's take a a step, like, sideways for a minute. So I started bridge or not bridge, but I started Emerald in 2008. It was known by different name back then. And when I first started working, you you had a project that had sustainability in its name, and I wanted my team on it and with it. And so we did a bunch of different things. Some of it was building certifications like LEED, and some of it was we part of the sustainable Cleveland 2019 consulting group that resulted in that plan that Cleveland did for for 10 years. You know, pieces and parts. And one of the engagements that we did ultimately led to the creation of Brilliancey, which is the software company that I founded in the 2014, 2015 time frame.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:17:04]:
And that one specifically deals with energy, gas, and water, and we can talk about that more if you want. But to your question about the energy infrastructure, we have really three kinds of utilities. We have municipal owned utilities, which means your city owns it. We have investor owned utilities, you know, publicly traded, privately held. We have cooperative utilities, which are owned by its members, usually in rural communities. So 3 types of utilities. We have electric, we have gas, and we have water. Water is predominantly owned by municipals.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:17:40]:
Gas is predominantly, I would say, investor owned at this point in time, The dribbles into the municipal. Electric is, by numbers, there's a 100 and 92 ish electric and gas investor owned utilities and 35100 municipals and cooperatives. So by number, there are more municipal and cooperative, but 70% of the country is served by an investor owned electric utility. So you get the numbers. 70% investor owned, but 30% of the country is served by over 3,000 electric and gas utilities. And then there's, like, 50,000 water utilities.

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:23]:
Right. Right. So

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:18:24]:
That's the lay of the land as far as who's actually delivering the goods that you need to run your home, your pizza shop, your business. It's all geographic, and it's all geopolitical.

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:35]:
Got it. So so let's dive into utilities for a bit. You know, you mentioned brilliancy kind of as a an offshoot of of some of the work you were doing in parallel to to the work that you were doing. What what is brilliancy? What was the the impetus for for that startup?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:18:50]:
Brilliantly got its name from the problem that it solves. It's a combination of 2 words, brilliant and efficiency. And the company is geared at making more efficient communications and transactions between utilities, electric, gas and water, and their customers, both residential and commercial. Today, Brilliance has a digital platform with web and mobile applications geared at streamlining those transactions and communications. They help utilities save operating costs and meet regulatory requirements by helping their customers manage, connect, save, and transact.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:27]:
From my perspective, you know, sustainability may not be this universal thing, but what is universal, I think, is a frustration from a consumer's perspective of just interacting with utility companies and how difficult that process and relationship is. And so from the perspective of establishing a relationship with consumers and the utility companies. Have you been able to kinda break through that, I think, painful process that a lot of us are familiar with?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:19:59]:
So, you know, that's a really interesting question, and I will love to just hit it right directly. The utilities are really tough to work with. Really tough. They're as I said, they're investor owned, which tends to mean that they're large. Right? Or they're municipal owned, which tends to mean that they're risk averse and maybe not fully staffed up or financed up to have the ability to be innovative. So Brilliance's original business model was selling direct to the utility, get the utilities to buy a license to Brilliance, have them put all of the data about their customer into the platform so the customer could connect with it, and off they would go. We were successful in getting Cleveland Public Power to pilot it and to use it for 4 years, a 2 year pilot, and then a renewal. But it generally speaking, it's a very difficult, long slog.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:20:54]:
I remember one of the judges in an early start up competition that I was part of said this will never work. She'll never be able to do it. The sales cycle at utilities is too long. Right? It is. It's super long. So, you know, we've pit it pivoted, and this is actually kind of a timely conversation offer opportunity for me to tell people this. But, we've just released an update to the app, which allows utilities to get into it for free. It may not have all the bells and whistles that the paid license for the utility uses, But we're now going back into the market, call it 2 point o of Brilliancey's mobile app with the idea that if customers demand it, the utilities will follow.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:21:40]:
And when we released 1 point o of the mobile app, we got into 26 states pretty much without spending a dime in about 2 weeks. And then we shut it down because then we had, you know, a use of utilities that we're trying to go after to get them back in. So long story short, we're gonna retest it, sort of pivot, go back out, and see if we can't get the utilities to come in based on customer demand. Because we can upload their data with their help. So how much are you using? It may be not in real time until we get the utilities to agree to share that data. But now is the time to push the envelope on who owns that data. If there isn't an opportunity today to close it down, then, you know, it might just be a a long slog. And what I mean by that

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:27]:
Mhmm.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:22:27]:
Is it's your data. You own the information of how much energy, water, gas you use. That's yours.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:35]:
Right?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:22:35]:
But you don't have access to it unless you go through permissions and firewalls and everything at the utility Because they believe, and with the best intentions, that they are the custodians of that data, and they have to make pretty sure that you really wanna see it, that you need to see it, that it's protected in the way they share it with you, and you can't get it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:58]:
Right.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:22:59]:
You can't get it in a usable format. Like, downloading PDFs of your energy bill in the year

Jeffrey Stern [00:23:04]:
It's not in a CSV. 21.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:23:06]:
It's not even in a CSV.

Jeffrey Stern [00:23:07]:
Give it to me

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:23:08]:
in a in a Give it to me in a I mean, you can get some different you know, especially water utilities locally. You can download your CSV all you want on how much you use. Do you want that, or do you want it in a graph?

Jeffrey Stern [00:23:21]:
And is it because is it because the utility companies just have a sense of propriety over this information? And, like, what is the competitive advantage of utility companies trying to silo it? And I'm trying to balance that with the perspective of the people that consume energy who may want to, you know, track their energy consumption and and hopefully, you know, improve upon it over time, be more efficient. So to me, it's very clear, you know, why we would want access to our own data to to improve our behavior and and become more efficient over time. But what is the the resistance from utility companies?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:23:59]:
So in their defense, part of it is safety and security of your data. They don't want the data to be hacked in such a way that somebody could get into your meter and know if you're home or not home based on your consumption trends. They don't want somebody to be able to hack into the system and find out your name, your address, your Social Security number, your everything else that they have. So there's all layer of legitimate data protection, which is one of the things that we think is pretty unique about the way we've set up. Brilliancee is we've disassociated the customer name from the data, and we're attaching it to a property address or a property key, if you will. So it's the way we sort of roll the data through the system that we don't ever need to know who they think owns that utility account. We match it up in different ways tied to the property, and then you own your property. You disappear.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:24:55]:
Your data disappears with you. Right? So we're trying to solve that privacy issue by the way we've structured our back end. But that's part 1. Part 2 is they paid for the meter that's on your house. So

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:08]:
Right. Right.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:25:09]:
For that meter. They read that meter. They're the first ones at the data, and the meter companies aren't allowed to just give you the data to the meter. The The meter companies got hired by the utility to put the meter in at your house or sold them the meter, etcetera. So you've got all of these layers that are, you know, highly regulated. Highly, highly, highly regulated. And there's not a bunch of customers standing at the corner saying, show me my data yet. But it's increasing.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:25:37]:
I mean, we we see it. We saw it 5 years ago when we were doing all the research that led to us starting this company. The one reason why utility programs that are around efficiency, savings, new products and services fail is because customers hate their utilities. Zero trust, 0 respect. They don't like each other. And so is Brilliancey's aim to do is create a platform we can collaborate together, talk and learn and share information, and off we go to this new reality.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:10]:
To this new reality. Yes. So what what have some of those learnings what what have those looked like working with, you know, CCP over the last few years and and kind of going through this transition as a company? What what are some of the takeaways that that you have?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:26:23]:
Customers want their data.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:25]:
Yeah.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:26:25]:
When you give it to them, they come back. When you actually have a meaningful engagement platform for the new customers to connect to, they will come back and do what you ask them to do. So one of the things that we learned in our our journey, and we use some of Cleveland Public Power's customers to prove this out, is if we reminded them that they could pay their bill online, they would actually go in and click through and do the activity. Mhmm. But absent the reminder, they weren't necessarily paying online or report an outage online, which saves call center dollars. Right? So it's easier for you to report the outage online, come and do it online. The number of outage reporting we got would skyrocket in percentage, you know, to the number of outages actually were. Right? So these two things you have to take into consideration.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:27:16]:
But at at rates that out surpassed all of their industries, we were, you know, 3 times the open rates on emails and 13 times the click through rates to get people to do what we wanted them to do because we had a friendly, easy, informative platform. And all of those things save utilities money. Less calls The call center saves money. Bills paid on time, produces better cash flow. There's somewhere between $20.28 on average spent on a customer who is delinquent on our energy bills. So every time you get somebody paying their bills on time, you're saving real dollars that the utilities could then deploy somewhere else.

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:00]:
Right. So so there's this advantage to the utility company is a better relationship with the with the with the people. Right. From the people's perspective, you get this access to to the data. So in reflection on, you know, the this pilot and and rollout, the the biggest hurdle really is just the the selling ultimately to the utility companies?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:28:23]:
That that's my takeaway from 5 years. It's the sales the sales process, the sales cycle. So we're coming back out. It's out. I mean, it's available today. Any utility any utility in the country, so United States only at this point in time, can go to our website. They can click the little button, create an account. We will set them up in the back end for free with the permissions that they're allowed to have.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:28:46]:
They can communicate with any that has downloaded the app in the App Store and affiliated to their utility. So we can create that connection. It can be a communications portal. They can test, message, send for free through the app. You know, right now, any utility wants to do that, can start doing that. And we already have customers, especially in this territory from Cleveland Public Power on it. We have a bunch from FirstEnergy. We have a bunch from Dominion East Ohio Gas, Columbia Gas, Cleveland Water.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:29:16]:
We've got, you know, people all through the state. Really, just because of the awareness from the start up community that Brilliance exists in some of the marketing that we did when we first launched the app 2 years ago.

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:28]:
Yeah.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:29:28]:
People there that are there. So so the sales cycle so we're, you know, lessons learned as a start up. You've gotta pivot sometimes. And so we're doing that freemium, and then we're working really hard to form some relationships with what we would call like minded companies that have deeper relationships into the in into the industry. Perhaps it's a meter company. Perhaps it's a bill payment company. But somebody like that who is already serving the industry, who could bring us along as, you know, a bolt on solution that'll strengthen their customer service.

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:04]:
Right. From the from the outside, it just seems obvious that something like this should exist that, you know, facilitates this relationship. I guess, 2 questions with this. Is there competition that you have in this space? And then, you know, why is it that the utility companies themselves in your perspective haven't tried to really improve upon the customer relationship with with the people?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:30:26]:
Okay. Well, so let's see the last one first. There's no utility would tell you they haven't tried.

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:31]:
Yeah.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:30:31]:
It's just what have they tried? Last year, one of the local gas utilities released their own version of an app into the App Store. And every time I log into it, I get offered the house I lived in in 2,004. Then I have to change the scroll button to the house I currently live in. And then if I wanna see my consumption, I get to download a PDF. That's the app that they just released in 2020. They'll go on and spoken. Right? Still wanna be friends in my backyard. So, but, you know, growing up in Cleveland or being in this area, you may have heard that term called case copy and steal everything.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:31:11]:
It doesn't necessarily mean case resume Missouri University. Of course. No. But the whole case method, the case must be copy and steal everything. So when we were doing our research that led to the formation of this company back in 2014, a Boston based company called My Energy had just been bought by Nest. And My Energy was the 2012, 13 version of Brilliance. It was a electric and gas only. You could go to the web, create an account.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:31:39]:
They would go to the back end, scrape the data off your bill from your electric or gas company, give it to you, and off you would go. So they got purchased by Nest, like, days, weeks, months before Google bought Nest. Mhmm. And then Google retired my energy. The whole platform just went away. So that was ultimately the first competition that we went in to compete with them because we wanted to do electric gas and water because we see all three of these things as needing to be intertwined, not just electric and gas. Part 1. Part 2 is there are a ton of providers that either have a technology like a Nest Thermostat or something else.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:32:23]:
Like, there's a company called Bidgely, which has a hardware device that utilities could buy. You you buy a Bidgely. You sign up for the Bidgely program. They install a Bidgely in your house, and a Bidgely will disaggregate your energy consumption to tell you you're using, you know, this much electricity or this much gas or this whatever right now. Right? So if you wanna save money, go turn off, turn off. But so they're electric and gas ones, but, again, not water. And then there's water ones that don't do electric and gas. So, yes, there is competition, but not what we're doing.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:32:58]:
We're hardware agnostic intentionally.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:01]:
Yeah. Alright. Changing behavior is one of the hardest things, I I feel like, with with any company. What has the reception been from the consumer's perspective, and have you kinda seen any behavioral changes that that come as a result of having access to this to this information?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:33:17]:
And so I'll I'm gonna answer that question sort of with a bridge between the two worlds I live, the brilliancy world and the emerald world.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:24]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:33:25]:
The answer is if people have information, they will change their behavior, helpful information. Information that's delivered to them in a helpful way. So there's the adage that you can't manage that which you don't measure. Right? So it's the same thing. If I don't know my bill is due, I'm not gonna pay my bill on time. If I don't have the data that or the tools that allow me to, you know, report the outage online on time, it might not happen. Or if I don't know how much energy I'm using right now, I can't turn off. So on the Emerald side of things, we are seeing this push for data around people performance, which is leading to the health and wellness interest and certifications, the carbon neutrality data points, which people don't know how much they're using or they're causing in addition to just what they're building is using through the employee transportation or that kind of thing.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:34:22]:
There aren't yet the systems in place to give people the data that they need, but they're asking the questions. And that's where I think the utilities really have an opportunity to turn around and look at things slightly different, which is what data do we have that really can help advance us into this carbon neutrality world? And how can we help our customers get where they wanna go? Because people wanna do it. People want to make change. It's the systems that are stopping people from making change.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:51]:
Right. From the perspective that you have both, you know, working and building brilliancy and also Emerald Built Environments, where just kind of working through this conversation, I feel like with Brilliancy, you really get a lot of insight into the individual's behavior. And with Emerald Built Environments, you get a more macro perspective on, you know, these larger, you know, infrastructure endeavors. Where do you think more of the change will actually come from? Is it an individual thing, or is it really more of like an infrastructure?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:35:22]:
What I am seeing is that the opportunity right now for change is really covering from both directions. And, ultimately, change happens when larger organizations and systems it happens more quickly when larger organizations and systems get on board. And I, like I said a few minutes ago, have hope that that system systemic change is closer to us today than it was 5 years ago. And that with the right decisions, intentional investments, and trust in the promise of what everybody's saying is that a reinvestment in our infrastructure, in green and renewable and efficient technologies and processes will lead to more jobs, higher economic performance, and all of those things that we need as a society and a culture to live and thrive and create more equity for everybody else in the process.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:14]:
Right.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:36:15]:
Those things, I believe, people just have to have a leap of faith that it's going to work. We saw we have seen in the past when we make major investments like they did when they electrified rural America, It brought rural America up, but still we have issues around equity and social connectivity that we still need to solve for. So we're not done. Right? And we still need to build upon that. But if people have trust and hope that the process will work and that these investments are ultimately better for all of us and for where we live, we should get there. And at the same pa point in time, every single person has an opportunity to make a difference. Small changes matter. If it's the little thing that you can do just to turn the lights off or turn the water off when you're brushing your teeth or stop using single use plastic, all of those things make a difference.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:37:10]:
But, you know, solar panels in your home and electric vehicles and things like that are things that are within reach of people as well. Do you time to get a new vehicle? Like, take a moment to think about it. Make the analysis and take the leap.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:26]:
Now what what you said just reminded me of, I don't know, maybe my favorite writer of the last year, but are you familiar with Bunkman Sirfueller?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:37:34]:
Mhmm. Yep. Yep.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:36]:
Yeah. So I I what you just said just really, like, made it click. But one of his, like, revelations, I guess, was that humans have essentially completed the energy plumbing and installed all these valves to, like, turn on in his, like, hive, you know, words, but, like, the infinite cosmic wealth of that that we can harness through renewable forms of energy. And so, like, so many of these problems at a societal level, a lot of the inequity that you kinda mentioned, it it's from this idea that energy is a limited resource, and it's not cost effective to deploy energy to solve certain problems yet. But if you can kind of revert that assumption that energy is a finite resource to one that energy is an infinite resource, which I think, you know, with this conversation, the optimism that you have, right, that's that's inevitably where we're going as a society. It's really just a matter of of when rather than if. Then then we can, you know, really probably address a lot of problems along the way.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:38:33]:
Mhmm. Yep.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:34]:
Sorry. Just my ramblings of fuck mister Fuller.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:38:38]:
No. He's he's awesome, and he gets it. And you're absolutely right. The way you interpreted that concept of it's not I mean, it is an infinite resource. Right? But it doesn't have to ultimately limit us if we can today, as we know, it is an infinite resource. It doesn't have to be if we embrace the technology and the change that can make it renewable and unlimited. Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:02]:
Right. Alright. So we can ground it more in in, in reality here. When when you think about the the next few years and and the future and vision for both Brilliancey and and Emerald Built Environments, where where do you see you taking the those companies?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:39:16]:
Well, big big goals. Right? So with Emerald, I mean, we work a lot in Ohio and Northeast Ohio, but we do work have a a footprint footprint across the nation and internationally. And our goal is to grow dramatically in the our ability to help and enhance as we call them sustainable environments. So we are we've proven it. We know how to do it. And so now it's time to scale. So that company is focused on making larger investments so that it can continue to grow and and help companies, you know, set and achieve their goals, not not just companies, but organizations with properties set and achieve their goals. Like, that's Emerald.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:40:01]:
On the brilliancy side, this is you know, they say, you know, entrepreneur's a little bit crazy. There's a lot of passion in it. I mean, brilliancy, I am very passionate about it. I'm passionate about what it could do. I am passionate about the opportunity that a promise of a platform like brilliance can bring. And so I am going to do what needs done to find it into a place where it can grow and thrive. Like, we've proven it. It works.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:40:28]:
It's in the market. I'm open to strategic partnerships. I am open to acquisition. I am open to that young, much more vibrant person today who wants a challenge and wants to come in as a cofounder or take the company and run with it. I'm open to lots of different opportunities to get the purpose and the mission behind Brilliancey up and running. So it's an invitation to your audience to think about it, to reach out to their networks, or raise their own hands to say, hey. We we think there's something here, and let's see what magic we can make happen.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:03]:
Yeah. So to the multitude of listeners we have here.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:41:06]:
Right. You know, Cleveland is, as I used to say, the number one exporter of people. Right? I think we're seeing a lot of boomerang coming back now. And even as you read through the you know, what fans said from the draft to Cleveland that just happened last weekend. Like, oh, several of those fans used to live here. Right? And they came back to Cleveland, but they are now Kansas City Chiefs fans or something else. But the I would not underestimate that audience that you have here in Cleveland listening to the land. Cleveland is universal.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:41:37]:
If there's one thing that isn't true, it's Cleveland's universal.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:40]:
Cleveland against the world.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:41:42]:
That's right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:42]:
Yeah. Well, yeah, let's let's tie it back to to Cleveland for a bit. One of the things that we ask everyone on on the show is not necessarily for your favorite thing in Cleveland, but for something that, other people may not know about it. A hidden gem, if you will. So what are your hidden gems in Cleveland?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:42:00]:
Hidden gem. So, I mean, I thought about this. You prompted me that you were gonna ask

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:05]:
me this

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:42:05]:
question. I was like, what are

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:06]:
you doing now? Question.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:42:08]:
It's the question. And I listened to what a couple other people say, and so to the extent I'm repeating the repeat, I think it deserves repeating. But our park system, both city, county, the national parks that we have here, like, the emerald necklace, whatever you wanna call it, all of it combined is an incredible asset. And there are so many different nooks and crannies. Because, actually, what I was gonna tell you is, like, Swires Castle, I think, is the coolest thing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:35]:
Oh, yeah.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:42:35]:
On the east side. Right? But that's part of the metro parks in the whole system. So that I'm just gonna have to, like, leave it right there at nature. At the end of the day, that's what keeps me going as the ability to connect with nature and to have nature. And we have so much of it in so many different ways in the 4 seasons, and you can go to Squires Castle in the spring, and it looks one way. You can go in the summer. It looks another way. In the fall, you can go in the winter.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:42:59]:
Right? You can it's just a different experience every time you go in a season to any place you go in in here in the land. So maybe I just backed myself into the weather, but I never say that I love the weather. You know, it's the it's the emerald necklace in all of our parks.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:16]:
Yeah. No. It's it is pretty special. That's for sure.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:43:19]:
That's how Emerald, by the way, got its name. And when we renamed it from previous was long debates. Is it the Western Reserve? Is it Cleveland? Is it this? It's that. And we're at the end of the day. It's emerald.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:30]:
Yeah. I'm just curious. Do do you where does where does emerald necklace come from? What is what is that?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:43:36]:
So the emerald necklace I I might butcher this, and you probably should call the park system to know for sure. But the emerald necklace is, at one point in time, the moniker that was given to our park system. I don't know if it's the national parks, the national plus the county, if it's just the county. That's a part where I'm stepping on geographic too, because I don't know. But the Emerald Necklace is the necklace of parks that goes around Cleveland slash Tiger County. You've never heard that before, the Emerald Necklace?

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:05]:
I I have heard it, but I I I I I, for some reason, didn't piece together that it it is if you look at a map, it might literally look like a green necklace around the

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:44:15]:
It does. Geography. Together down there around the rivers and the streams and

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:19]:
It, just clicked right now. So thank you for that. No problem. Awesome. Well well, Laura, I I really appreciate you coming on and and sharing your story. It really is, a topic that I think is really important, and I think the work you're doing is, is really special. So I appreciate it.

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:44:36]:
Thank you so much for having me. It was fun to chat and learn about you and share the story.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:41]:
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. If people again, our multitudes of listeners here. If if anyone would like to follow-up with you, where's the the best place for for them to do so?

Laura Steinbrink (Brilliency & Emerald Built Environments) [00:44:50]:
So probably email. I mean, my personal email address, laurasteinbrink@mac.com. Laurasteinbrink ring@mac.com. Like, easy way to find me.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:02]:
That's all for this week. Thanks for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so shoot us an email at lay of the land at upside dot f m, or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland