John Seryak - Go Sustainable Energy and the People Behind the Power

[00:00:10] Adam: Hello and welcome to Green Champions.

[00:00:12] Dominique: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people sharing sustainability success stories.

[00:00:16] Adam: From entrepreneurs to artists, scientists to activists, this podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas. I'm Adam.

[00:00:24] Dominique: And I'm Dominique. 

[00:00:25] Adam: In case you missed it, last time we talked about building inclusivity in the workplace Today we're diving into John's champion story, which is found in Go Sustainable Energy. 

[00:00:33] Peter Kleinhenz: Before we get into today's champion story with John Seryak, we're gonna hear from the Go Sustainable Energy Team. This is Peter Klein. My favorite thing about working for Go is that it's a place that puts its highest value on producing meaningful, high quality work, as well as the happiness of its employees. I feel it, it truly is a company that cares.

we wanna make a positive impact on the world through our careers. I feel lucky that Go's a place that I can do that, so I truly enjoy it.

[00:01:07] Greg Raffio: Hi, my name is Greg Raffio and I've been with Go ever since, just after the beginning. My favorite thing about working at the company is that I've experienced very few situations where I felt more part of a team than this. Everyone really looks out for each other. Everyone covers for each other. Doors are always open.

We are a place you can come not to have someone tell you exactly that you have to buy this product from us or do this service. We start with listening, we start with relationships, and so when people come to us and ask questions, we can tell them that they don't need our services or that they actually have all that they need already and point them in the right direction.

which actually in the long run. Helps with our relationships and it helps us do more impact for organizations that actually need us to help them advance how they use their facilities, how they use energy, how they pay for it, and their emissions.

[00:02:01] Suzanne Lentz: Suzanne Lentz. Over the years We've modified our used office furnitures to make them more ergonomic. We have used thrift store, purchased cloth, napkins and cloth break room towels which we'd wander on site because we were in an office building that also had apartments in it.

And there was laundry in the basement. We've used interface carpet, which is one of the most sustainable companies we know. And we shop locally.

[00:02:34] Shawn Brown: My name is Shawn Brown and I have worked at Go Sustainable Energy for 19 years. The work we do at Go is in an area where the issues are complex with answers that are rarely obvious. What I appreciate most is that this company values thoughtful analysis, encourages questions, and gives people the space to really understand a problem before jumping to a solution.

I've had the chance to work people who are smart, collaborative, and genuinely committed to doing things the right way, not just the easy way. 

You're challenged to grow, but in a way that feels supportive rather than pressured. I've learned more here than at any other point in my career, and that learning has made me better, not just at my job. But how I think about problems more broadly, it is a place where expertise is respected, different perspectives are welcomed, and good ideas can come from anywhere.

That combination keeps me engaged, continually learning, and genuinely proud to be part of Go.

​

[00:03:38] Adam: welcome back. In case you missed it, last time we had a great discussion on building inclusivity in the workplace and making people feel welcome in this work and really listening to people well in order to drive change.

Today we're diving into John's champion story, which is found in Go Sustainable Energy. John, welcome back. 

[00:03:53] John: Thank you. 

[00:03:54] Adam: All right. Well, let's get right to it. What ultimately motivated you to found Go Sustainable Energy? 

[00:03:59] John: So a bunch of different things. the short answer is I was working for another company in the Boston area. We wanted to move back to Ohio as part of it. And then I felt that company was like slightly off from the sort of place I wanted to work and the type of work we wanted to do. I was probably 26, 27 when I started a company. And I had some young person's ambition. I felt like I needed to do something big and I wanted to front load my midlife crisis. Like people get to 40 or 50 and they're like, "Oh, what'd I do with my life?" Buy a car. And I'm like, I'm not doing that. I'm gonna do something like risky early. I was like, how do people make big change? So, I went to the University of Dayton and they did a very good job instilling values and like talking about vocation, not just jobs, it wasn't about money.

And my family raised and my parents raised me that way as well. And so I tried to look for who made big differences, who made change. And so would read about people who could be heroes like Martin Luther King or Gandhi, or who changed how we think. And the King's biography, one of his biographies I read when I was in my twenties, I hadn't realized that he was young when he led the Birmingham Bus Boycott and he led, I mean, there's way more people involved in that, Rosa Parks included, right? It wasn't just King, but King was like 26, I think. He was like 26 or 27 when he did that. And I'm like, but the picture image of King is like, he's older.

[00:05:24] Dominique: No, you're so right. I definitely picture him as like a full developed adult.

[00:05:27] John: Yes. And I looked for, okay, who else changed how we think? And so I was like when did Jane Goodall change how we perceive our own species differently? That's a pretty big deal. She made a big change. And her path is very non-traditional, even now but for the time. And like when she's sitting there saying we're not special chimpanzees use tools, she was like, also 26. And then Darwin, I'm like Darwin also changed how we think about ourselves.

And he didn't publish until he was pretty old, but when he was like in the Galapagos and figuring stuff out, he was also 26. And then I was like, what about Einstein had changed how we think about the universe. When did he do that? He was old, right? We think of Einstein and we see like the gray and white hair. We picture him old. And all his work, he published these four papers. It's called his Miracle Year, and he was 

[00:06:17] Dominique: 26. 

[00:06:18] John: And so like when I was like 22 and reading all this stuff, I was like, oh my God, I'm almost outta time. If ever I wanna do, there must be something to young people will kind of have a different perspective or do something different. But also they were, they, I'm like they just stated something that was kind of universal. 

I'm like, maybe I can do that with work. I'm not gonna be Jane Goodall or Einstein. I'm not at that level, but I wanted to challenge myself to be more than just go to work. And so the challenge I picked was start a place of work that's actually gonna work on social and environmental issues and create a good place to work.

And I was like, I need to do it. There's something about 26. And so I, I started it when I was 27, but I did have a bit of a clock. I was 

[00:07:02] Dominique: outta time really?

[00:07:03] John: Yeah. I was like, is this where I was working? I'm like, is this doing it for me? And when I was kind of like, it's not quite doing it for me, then I'm like, I better do something or 'cause something happens when you get into like 30. Now that's not entirely true, but that's part of my story is I like had this drive to do something.

[00:07:21] Adam: Now if you are listening in your forties and you say, "Hey, I want to have a career change", talk to me. That's my journey. It's not impossible. You don't need to be 26, but I'm glad that you got started at 26.

[00:07:33] Dominique: And well, something you said throughout all those examples was like, they change the way we think about X. But is it fair to say kind of your mantra at that point was you wanted to change the way people thought about energy? Or change the way we think about company impact on communities?

[00:07:47] John: That, yes. How people think about energy is very uninformed and abstract most of the time. I want to change how we society use energy, like our societal approach to energy. There's like, there's changes that need to happen there.

[00:07:59] Adam: So can you tell us what exactly Go Sustainable does?

[00:08:02] John: Yes. We provide accurate, unbiased information on energy to our clients. 

[00:08:06] Adam: And what sort of projects does that take the form of? 

[00:08:09] John: Yeah, so pretty much the waterfront, like the whole waterfront on how people might be able to change how they use energy. So that's energy efficiency which is how much you use compared to what you need to do. There's what we'd call like load management. So the concept here is like, well, maybe you're doing something efficiently, but you should do something yet differently when the grid is stressed. Like the hottest hour of the hottest day. Can you generate your own energy? So distributed generation, that's often solar, but can be wind or gas generation. Batteries are starting to become more of this. 

So we'll advise on all of these ways to manage energy and then the technical and economic information, companies need to make decisions around that. And then we're also, I would say, pretty good at working within the different management and staff levels within an organization or a company, because there's different, you might have a half dozen people involved with making a decision in different roles, and they all need, they usually need slightly different information to answer their question and maybe even framed up. And so as engineers, we've actually become I think, pretty good at figuring out who are all the people that need to be involved, and what is the question they need answered or the information they need to come to a decision. So the subject matter is like energy use and production. But then the skill is technical and economic analysis, but also this kind of like human consulting piece of who needs to be involved and what did they need to know.

[00:09:35] Dominique: You mentioned that broad array of roles that relate to energy at one organization. What are some examples of those different stakeholders? Just to give us a sense of how broad they can be 

[00:09:45] John: Yes. Yeah, so a key stakeholder and the position type work rooted in and built our expertise around is facility staff. So these are people who usually, the organization doesn't know their name. They might not know they exist. They only call if there's a problem. And people see them less than IT staff. Just got to do an IT staff. Like they're problem solvers. You only see them on like, there's a problem. So they're working with the equipment that uses energy though. So this is like boilers, chillers, air conditioners. And they are the masters of how those things work. But then they are not in charge of paying the energy bills. So any benefit from running the equipment differently does not fall through to their department or their salary or bonus. So we have to talk to them both to understand what can be changed and then acknowledge if any of it goes wrong, which will happen, they get all the downside and the organization and other people get the upside. So that's one thing where like if you don't understand that, you're probably not gonna make progress.

And then who gets the upside? Or like, where's that? And so you have to talk, you have to understand whose position relates to saving money on the utility bill, who gets credit. And what we find is most organizations don't have anyone that gets credit if they reduce the utility bill. And if you think about it, you're like well, how do we ever make progress on energy use?

No one recognizes the benefit. So then we end up with like who decides who gets the benefit? And you might end up with CFO or COO, sustainability managers, the whoever the facility staff report up to. And in each organization, those reporting or pieces are in different position types.

So energy and sustainability, they're like, you can go from one organization to another and find they're housed in completely different positions and roles. So we end up talking with like lots of different career types inside the organizations. 

[00:11:29] Adam: Got it. This is kind of painting a great picture of like, why it's really important to understand all the stakeholders that you're working with on a project, especially in this energy space where before, maybe people weren't seeing the value or getting recognized for the value that was being created by these projects and how to change that conversation. 

[00:11:44] John: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:11:45] Dominique: It makes you also wonder how all these systems were built and like why we don't put them at the forefront, why we don't think about putting rewards. It's just very interesting 'cause you also mentioned last time about that we have the technology we need in this space. That's not really the issue. It's more the understanding, the education, the perspective, maybe the mechanisms that we use to think about energy. So that's a good example too, of how you incorporate and engage people in the conversation is a big part of actually seeing progress with it.

[00:12:12] John: Yes. And understanding what are their motivations, what are their incentives, what are their barriers or preconceived notions. I think I was saying, technology and economics and political will, people will go to those as the barriers. And I'm like, that's not the barrier. And then when we say like who gets the upside?

In most organizations, it's nobody. Nobody gets credit. No one gets the upside, and thus it doesn't exist, is what happens to the organization. It doesn't exist. And then if you think about that, you're like what the hell? Like, it's intuitive you will make no progress on energy if the organization cannot understand when it saves money.

And that is starting to change pretty substantively. But we're in the midst of that, like as a culture. But five years ago, I would say almost no organization actually knew when it saved money, when it saved energy. And so, yeah, that ends up being a focus point of ours is figuring these things out.

[00:13:03] Dominique: Tell us an example about where you saw meaningful energy and or, sounds like and cost savings.

[00:13:08] John: Yeah, so one of my favorites, and this is on our website so I'm gonna say the client name 'cause they would've given us permission already if it's on our website. But the Ohio History Connection building. This is right off for local folks. This is right off of 71 by the old Crew Stadium. It looks like a giant shoebox. That building is fascinating. Has a green roof, by the way. You think you're looking at a lawn that's part of their roof sometimes for part of it.

But this was years ago, we did an energy assessment and we listened to their facility staff. It was a guy named Charlie. He wanted to do a project. He was like, "Hey, this one office needs air conditioned all the time, but the rest of the building doesn't and I wanna give it dedicated air conditioning 'cause the whole system has to run to air condition this one space." And we were like, oh yeah. That's a great idea. And then buildings like that are also designed for like, it's a museum and so they're designed for maximum occupancy. So when the design engineer does it, there could be hundreds or thousands of people in here. And they need to breathe, so you need to bring in outside air for oxygen so people can breathe. But most of the time, there are not thousands of people in this building and it's like, you know, take, like this week it was super cold. If you're bringing in air for thousands of people to breathe and it's cold, you have to spend a lot of money heating that up. Or it's opposite in the summer, cooling it down.

And so there's some things you can do where you're like let's just measure the amount of CO2 in the air and there's not thousands of people in here, and so we don't need to bring in all this air. So those two things combined, there were the other things. Their facility staff were on board. They had a great energy and sustainability staffer at the time. Amy Casper, who's still around here, but she's a champion if you haven't had her on. They listened, they acted on these things and they dropped their energy use and cost by over 50%.

And it was so much on their gas side that the gas company, Columbia Gas called them up because they thought the meter broke. So it was like way more than 50% on gas, like stunning drops from these two things. So, 

[00:15:04] Dominique: Can you give us a sense in case one's listening and doesn't know how much an average facility spends on energy? Is there a good range on an annual basis for a certain client type to give us a sense of where those numbers fall?

[00:15:16] John: Yeah. I forget with them, a building that size is probably they'll spend a couple hundred thousand dollars on energy, so maybe three to 600. And if you're envisioning like a big building, hospitals, you might get into a couple million. And then some of our clients, yeah, I think at like a healthcare client, like a big hospital complex might use like five to 7 million. 

So that's the kind our clients were in this like low end. They're spending a couple hundred thousand dollars on gas and electric combined. High end, we might be working with a client with multiple buildings and maybe they're spending 50 or 60 million. 

[00:15:49] Dominique: But just to pause for a sec, that like very beautiful symbiosis of being able to put money back into organizations, especially when it's a museum or a community organization like that, even just $100,000 on an annual basis, the amount of programs or people that can support, and then you're doing that at the same time that you're lightning up our grid and thinking about like our community's usage of energy. I just think, the fact that it's not just net neutral financially, but it's investing money back into these, I mean, yeah. Every one of the institutions you mentioned needs more funding. 

[00:16:23] John: Yeah.We're actually have been talking about we need to like add it up because our impact to the community is like enormous financially. Because when you save on your bills, that money goes into the organization can do other things.

[00:16:35] Dominique: And you've now been around for how long? 

[00:16:37] John: 19 and a half years. 

[00:16:38] Dominique: So just shy of 20 years. How has the company's mission or approach changed over the years to as technologies and policies have changed?

[00:16:47] John: So in one perspective, not much. The vision, like we talked about the vision and then we have a mission and those have stayed pretty the same.

And for me, I look back on when I was 27 and that was the first thing I did. I'm like, why am I doing this? I wrote down the vision. What am I doing? I wrote down the mission. And we've tweaked those things, but they're like the glue. Itreduces management time and changes a lot 'cause it aligns people really quickly.

But there have been meaningful changes 'cause we went from one person, me, with very little work to do with an entrepreneur startup company to now we have 27, 28 people. So changes, I think a lot of it has been like understanding like all the things that businesses go through.

Like it turns out we have not been exempt from any, there's a whole bunch of stuff businesses have to do. Money matters. You have to like, you can't get the money part wrong or you're in big trouble. People matter. You know what we call HR, which is probably a poor term. If you do not figure out that you're working with humans and they go through all the human things, you're gonna have miserable time. Like you have to be very matter of fact about money and people. And that is constant changing, every time you add someone that those equations and dynamics change a little bit. And if you don't pay attention to it, you're gonna get surprised in a not fun way. But then as technologies changed, we went from a company that was our clients would pay us for energy efficiency because it saved them money and they saw value in that.

But when we started, there was no renewable energy. That was like science fair. You know this school got a grant and showed they have like two solar panels out there for their kids to see. That was renewable energy when we started, it was not a thing. LED lights were not, they would've been in like a science fiction story when we started 20 years ago. They weren't even close. An LED bulb was like in the lab, or it cost like $500 per ball. And so the technology has changed at a very rapid pace. EV cars were not a thing, right? In fact, most people thought we would never get to any of those technologies 20 years ago. There was disbelief.

And so as those have changed, our client's need for advice has changed from being just money and efficiency focused to carbon is a much bigger deal. Even now in 2026. believe it or not, it is still a big driver. And then just dealing with all these new technologies.

So our work has grown 'cause our clients need to understand should they adopt solar? Are employees wanting to charge their car in their parking lot? Should they change how much energy they use at peak times? These are all things that we address now that 20 years ago would not.

[00:19:11] Dominique: Do you find that clients come to you now more with things like, I saw this, should we do this? Because there's more rhetoric around this stuff versus maybe before you were like, have you heard of this?

[00:19:21] John: That is exactly right. 20 years ago was, have you heard of this? There needed to be, we worked with champions. Your podcast is Green Champion. Our clients were champions because there was not a systemic or organizational way to address this. There was an in-house advocate, that's who hired us. Now it's systemic, and so sometimes we get hired because before it was the champion, we were like, did you know this? And the champion can advocate inside the organization. Now it is sometimes someone's I got hired by the organization to manage this and I'm overloaded. There are too many choices. I have too much I can do. There's a ton of different directions. And even sorting through, how do I start? We'll get hired for that.

That's probably most of our clients now hire us because they're like something, we're gonna do something and the boss will give me money, but how do I start and how do I continue? And there's risk to that and need for information. 

[00:20:11] Adam: On the other side, you've also now have a subsidiary called RunnerStone. Can you explain what that is how that came about?

[00:20:17] John: Yeah, so that came about first. So we were open to doing policy and regulatory advising before we knew what that was. We did a company retreat where we listed out. We offer accurate and biased information for people to make decisions on energy.

Who needs that? And one of our engineers was like people who make decisions that, policy need that pretty obviously. And then a couple years later we got invited into a conversation around policy, that was a round table, like meant to be like oddball. Like, Let's bring people together. And so some clean energy companies got invited and at the time we were like the energy efficiency company. People didn't know what that is, they still don't. But they're, like, John says it's him. So invite John, he'll be the energy efficiency, clean business company. And all these clean energy businesses went to a round table with the Ohio Manufacturers Association.

And at the time, like cap and trade was up for discussion. And so people were trying to mix. We're gonna mix these different groups. But trying to get is there common ground. And we work with a ton of manufacturers. And so, I think I said something at one point that all the manufacturer, in my memory, the manufacturers and the clean energy companies all shook their head at the same time and I was like yeah. But the Manufacturer's Association staff, I think, took note of that, and they were kind of like, Hey, you.

[00:21:37] Dominique: Come over here.

[00:21:38] Adam: They tapped you on the shoulder.

[00:21:39] John: I don't know how they would tell it, but the executive director, Eric Berkland, who's also an important mentor of mine, I wanted to mention to him. He specifically was like, stared me down. 

[00:21:48] Dominique: You're onto something.

[00:21:49] John: Yeah, and then he started including me in conversations and their staff in rooms that like had lawyers and lobbyists. And I would just say yes, because I'm like, I need to network with manufacturers. Those are our clients. And they're saying, come in. And I'm like, I don't think I have anything to say here, but I will show up if you ask me to show up.

And then, and so I did that for a while and then one day I said more. I started asking questions and that. And I think what they saw, I think Eric saw this before I did, was the policy and regulatory space is like a desert from fact. My experience has been, and kind of how I think it all played out is, like you have lawyers and lobbyists and policy makers trying to weigh in on important things, but no one know. Like they have a role called a subject matter expert. They'll bring in like a subject matter, and I'm a subject matter expert. So they're like bringing in, you need someone who actually knows what the hell's going on. Who knows what a kilowatt hour is. Who knows what a kilowatt is, who understands like what effect this is gonna have. And so at first I didn't, but I had this technical knowledge and also how manufacturers make decisions. So this people part, I think was part of it, is I can come in as with Go Sustainable Energy and get along with manufacturers and talk with them about how like, what their interests are and respect that. And that gave us a foothold in that community. But then our skills it turned out were like direly needed with policy and regulation. So we ended up I think figuring out, we could talk to manufacturers, but we could also talk to policy makers and the people who work with policy makers. And there are people the manufacturers association would be one of them, to actually take policy making seriously, like this stuff actually needs to work. There are, I would say there's actually there's a decent sized chunk of people like elected leaders and people who affect them that want to see things work.

[00:23:37] Dominique: A nice reminder, they're out there. 

[00:23:39] John: Yeah. I do think they're outnumbered. 

[00:23:42] Dominique: Fair. I love the way that you've been willing to like, be creative, pivot, incorporate things that your team is passionate about and sees upcoming gaps in, in terms of Hey, like why aren't we part of the policy conversation? Or why aren't we in these rooms? you've been willing to go and see how you can be of service, basically. but looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of energy and the way that you see go playing a role in that?

[00:24:06] John: Yeah, so the things that excite me most, I'll pick two. So one is like internal with our company. When our staff have a moment with a client, we call it like the 'aha' moment. Like you get into this oh, we keep showing them this is how it works and this is how it is. And then you see like they don't take action or they take a different action or like, no, that's not. But then there's this like kind of hard communication and relationship building process that can start to feel wrong or hopeless or you start getting discouraged and then one day you go to a meeting with the client and they go oh.

They're like, hey, you know what I did? And then they like, lay out.

[00:24:47] Dominique: What you told them to do?

[00:24:48] John: They took some, and often it's like not predictable. We're like, "Oh, they picked up on something we said." And they integrated it and they did something different and it was good for them and for us. And we have all these clients where they've been our client for years. But like we recognize there are these moments that like aren't often predictable where they pick up on what something we are saying and it changes what they're doing and then we start collaborating. And then it like takes off. And we look for that with our staff and that's what's exciting. That's what everyone gets excited about. And maybe more so when a coworker has it, we're like waiting, when's the new person gonna get their aha moment? 'Cause it's almost it's like mind blowing. It's like very satisfying. So we look for those, that gets me excited. The energy space, electricity in particular, I would say. My view of the electric system and the policies and regulations and the players is it is not fully baked. It is not fully formed. It is not what we think of when we think of America. I'm like, think the opposite things, and that is this system.

It's jarring almost how dysfunctional, undemocratic, balkanized, corrupt. It makes no sense. And I think there's a whole bunch of reasons, but I think we think oh, we're done in America. Well, some national conversation maybe about what America is right now. But I think we maybe have this thought of oh, America is this 200 years of history and we built these things and now we have the America that was given to us.

And I'm like, the electric sector is to me, like never really got into infancy or childhood. It's a problem and now we are at, there's multiple technological and cultural drivers that I think have the potential to reshape it fundamentally into a way more fair system. Which, if you're a big picture person, if you wanna make an impact, this is the time. But it's kind of scary and may require boldness because it means " Hey, maybe we need to reshape how the electric systems work and how people, businesses function there."

[00:26:47] Dominique: You just see a sea of opportunity.

[00:26:49] John: It's a sea of opportunity, but it is, to me, it is. It requires or probably will come about through disruption, not incremental change. And so there's some that's high stakes. 

[00:26:59] Adam: One thing that jumped out to me in this episode was just you're talking about, hey, you have to find that value for people at different levels.

So if it's the facility maintenance group and they're gonna bear the brunt of anything that goes wrong, how do you need to communicate with them? So really approaching it with that lens of giving attention to everybody and bringing them into that conversation. I really love that aspect of what you do, so thanks for sharing that today. 

[00:27:20] Dominique: Yeah. How can listeners support you or advocate for the work that you're doing?

[00:27:23] John: So they could go to our website, gosustainableenergy.com. But really what I'd like them to do is just remember, if they're like, I like what they did, that sounded cool. Think of who in their lives they think wants to also hear about this or know about this, or maybe works in an organization that they're dealing with energy or sustainability. But probably most people know, like I have a person in my personal life that is kind of a little bit nutty about energy or talks about it too much. Or has to deal with, tell them about this podcast. Let's spread the word. And like probably in one or two degrees, they will land on someone who works at a potential client of ours that goes, I need those people, the non-judgmental people with the information that can help me make decisions and they're gonna support my decision.

Like when those people find out about us, they go, oh, I was, I was looking for a company like you. 

[00:28:11] Adam: Like that's why we need Go Sustainable.

[00:28:13] John: Yeah, that's why, but we often get it through connections, like that word of mouth connection. So

[00:28:18] Dominique: Thank you so much for joining us and bringing your champion story to our listeners and for all that you do with Go Sustainable. I hope you quantify some of those impact numbers. Because I think that they're probably astronomical.

[00:28:30] John: Well, You're welcome and thank you for having me on the podcast. This was a pleasure.

[00:28:33] Adam: As always, our guests have found a unique way to champion sustainability. We are here to put real names and stories behind the idea that no matter your background, career, or interests, you really can contribute in the fight against climate change.

[00:28:44] Dominique: You can find our episodes, donate or reach us at thegreenchampions.com. Give us a review and follow us in your favorite podcast platform. Our music is by Zayn Dweik. Thanks listening to Green Champions. We'll dig into our sustainability success story in our next episode.