Marcus Hazelwood - Clearing the Haze Around Sustainability

[00:00:05] Dominique: Welcome to Green Champions.

[00:00:06] Christy: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people sharing sustainability success stories.

[00:00:11] Dominique: This podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas. I'm Dominique.

[00:00:16] Christy: And I'm Christy.

[00:00:17] Dominique: And today Christy and I are very excited to be chatting with Marcus Hazelwood. This guy does it all. He's an engineer, an entrepreneur, and a podcast host, all things that we're gonna talk about in this episode and the next.

Marcus focuses on optimizing energy resource utilization as a professional. But before we get into that in the next episode, in this one we're gonna talk about Marcus's career path into this work and all things that have led him here. So, thanks for joining us, Marcus.

[00:00:44] Marcus: Absolutely. I'm excited to be here.

[00:00:46] Christy: Awesome. Well, we're so excited to introduce you to our listeners and learn about you. And so Marcus, you're talking to us today from Columbus. Are you originally from Columbus?

[00:00:57] Marcus: I am. Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio.

[00:01:00] Christy: All right. And you're still there, so I'm assuming it's a good thing.

[00:01:03] Marcus: So life took me back to Columbus, Ohio. my wife and I moved to Boston, Massachusetts for probably there about eight years. And then when we left, we thought, we're gonna find somewhere warm and stay there. And so what ended up happening is we had our first kid in COVID times, and then, we found our way.

We have most of our family in Columbus, Ohio. We probably should just go head back to Columbus, Ohio. So it wasn't a bad thing. it made sense for us. And I was also excited to kinda see what was going on back in the Midwest after being on the East Coast for about eight-plus years.

[00:01:35] Christy: So you came back, and coming back for family's great, especially when you have the littles, 'cause it's so nice just to have a good support system. But clearly, there's something about Columbus that drew you. Was sustainability on your radar?

Did you care about energy as a kid? Did it register with you, and when did that happen?

[00:01:52] Marcus: So I started out in school, in high school, I went to a career center that gave me the opportunity to get into drafting AutoCAD. So I learned drafting. I like to do landscape, so I did a little landscape business. I was cutting grass, doing people's landscapes.

I got into a lot of the details around designing things and then being able to actually put the work in to see them completed. So I thought maybe I'll be a landscape architect or I liked cars, so maybe I'll be a car designer. I thought a lot of different things in high school, but the AutoCAD drafting program helped me see that, okay, this is how things are built.

And so from there, it kinda got my foot in the door with an engineering firm, to where I was drafting for mechanical engineers and plumbing engineers. And so I wasn't going to school for that. I was thinking, "I don't wanna go to school for engineering. I really don't wanna do that much math."

So that was kind of the initial thought. And so I kinda went backwards. I didn't go to school right away. I was able to get my foot in the door and learn design. And from there I was thinking, "Okay, I probably should get some type of degree, but I don't really wanna do a mechanical engineering degree.

So what do I do?" And I happened to get into energy modeling and the sustainability aspect of engineering, still in design space. So I still had to learn design. I still had to do the calculations and figure things out in that way. But it made me feel like, okay, I like the sustainability aspect.

So that was more into maybe four or five years into working with a firm. And then I went to another firm that did energy modeling, and that opened my eyes up to more of the sustainability world. So into my, what would've been college days, but it ended up being more experienced days in the career before making decisions about college.

[00:03:31] Dominique: How would you describe energy modeling for someone who is like, "What are you talking about?"

[00:03:36] Marcus: Yeah. So energy modeling is really thinking about how does this building or house use energy from electricity to gas, and where is the energy being used. essentially, you're building a virtual structure so you could build your house in the virtual computer world, and then you put in those HVAC systems, your heating and cooling, and then you put in the lighting, and you put in your water heater, and you put in all these systems that need energy that you have to plug in, and then you essentially simulate that structure, and you get a monthly output of what the total energy consumption is.

And then you scale that for commercial buildings when you have big boilers, big chillers. You're putting all those detailed systems into a simulation, and you're able to see how they perform. You use weather data, and you look at the historical data to apply what the weather might look like and how that building performs in those systems.

So you're essentially simulating a building before actually building it, so testing.

[00:04:36] Dominique: Was there someone in your life thatrecommended this path for you? 'Cause I feel like not everybody knows what that is and, finds it at such a young age and is, formally trained in those kinds of environments. Was there a nice mentor or human in your life that nudged you that direction?

[00:04:53] Marcus: So I would say that the mentor that I just happened to get the opportunity to get in with an engineering firm. There was an engineer that I'll always remember He was very, very detailed, and everything he did, even to a call-out of a duct, he said, "No, you need to move that up so as you can't see it."

He was just very formal in the way he did his drawings, and it stood out to me. And so I also would hang out with him. He had a boat, he had a motorcycle, 

[00:05:18] Dominique: He was also just simply cool

[00:05:19] Marcus: "Yeah." He was also cool, too. So I was just thinking like, "Man, he's so detailed." And then that carried over to his life outside of work because his boat, everything was 

so detailed with it. And I'm like that, too. I like the detail. I like to call out, "Oh, that rug isn't straight. Let me straighten it." I'll do things like that. And my mom always has a story. She's like, "When you were younger, I always remember everybody was leaving.

I have eight brothers and sisters, by the way, so big family. Everybody's running out of the house, and my mom said I stopped just to slightly fix the rug, and then I continued on. She's like, "You're so detail-oriented." And I was like, "I guess that's where I like that kind of stuff." So translating that into kind of what I'm doing now, I think about the details.

I'm interested in them enough to learn them. So that mentor that I had in my first engineering job, he showed me a lot of the ropes, and he built my interest in understanding, not engineering as just a job, but making it an art.

 And so engineering is just, you usually don't see the mechanical systems when you go into a nice architecturally designed building, but those are important. And so I think that I kinda found my way through my experiences and latched onto different things that I liked.

 I'm curious if you have any hobbies and what they might be. What would be surprising to us?

I think I have too many hobbies because I like doing so many different things. So I like to write music. I sing at my church. That's more of a hobby because I just like being involved in music. And then also, I love to build things. 

I just like to build something. I can see it in my head, and I'm like, "I'm gonna figure out how to make this." So, that's a hobby of mine that I take into different aspects, I'm building right now, a piece of furniture, with wood. If you've seen an infinity table, it's a coffee table that you put a mirror on the bottom and a one-way mirror on the top, and you put a ladder inside and you look down into it, it looks like it never ends.

[00:07:07] Dominique: My brain is broken right now, but I'm gonna look it up after the episode.

[00:07:11] Marcus: You should. You will be like, "Wow," and that's what happened to me. I saw it and I was like, "Wow, I wanna figure out how to build that." So that's one of my projects. 

But for the most part it's my family. I have a three and a five-year-old, and being able to have them see things and experience things is even more exciting to me to be able to try to embody what it felt like when I was that age or to show them something that wows them or to see that they are interested in it is super exciting to me.

my wife is homeschooling, and so I even have the benefit to, be able to be a part of that sometimes and see how their small minds develop. 

[00:07:43] Christy: And I love that your kids get to see you doing all of this stuff. I know we're sitting here with the three of us, and we're all entrepreneurs at this point in our lives. The work that you're doing today has been built on a variety of different career transitions, but you now are running your own business.

[00:07:59] Dominique: Homeschooling your kids, it's a really hard task. Your wife is an absolute champ.

Also I think just, being able to do all of this, I'm sure with them being able to watch and learn from you, it is so, so impactful. Did you have entrepreneurs around you growing up?

Or, did you find your way to that on your own?

[00:08:14] Marcus: So I did have my brothers, friends. There was a lot of different things going on in terms of entrepreneurship, around... If everyone's heard about, they call them pyramid schemes you find somebody and get them involved, and then they find a friend, and they find a friend. So there was a lot of experiences with those. 

But in terms of successful businesses from an entrepreneurial standpoint, I didn't know a lot of people, but I knew I wanted to try and do that.

it was a desire of mine early on. I actually started my LLC in 2008. So as soon as I got into drafting, I had already started an LLC to provide drafting services to people. Not just people, but engineers and anyone that would take my services, I can draft something for you.

[00:08:58] Dominique: You're like, "I don't care if you build it or not, I will draft something for you."

[00:09:01] Marcus: I will draft it, I learned a skill in high school, and I thought, "Okay, this skill I think is valuable. Let me see if I can make this into a business." One of my first clients was an engineer. I was just doing their drafting work, just coming into their office and doing some drafting, and was able to build through my business, and that was my first experience with entrepreneurship.

And I found out that, okay, I need to know a lot more before I can build this business. So again, that was 2008, and I didn't really start launching off into my own fully until a couple years ago. So my whole career, I had that in the back of my mind, but I knew that I need to figure some things out and have more experience before I could really launch into it.

[00:09:38] Christy: Well, I think experiential learning, it's so important. there's these ideas, you can have concepts, but until you touch it and experience it, I think there's something powerful about that moment, you've done everything we've talked about and then you transitioned from a mechanical designer to engineer.

You were with KLH Engineers as an energy analyst. You then went to Harvard as an energy analyst, and you're back in Columbus. There's a lot to unpack in there in what you did in that time, and you maybe told us some stories in there, 'cause now you're back in Columbus in 2024, Haze Enterprises, and you're the director of optimization services for EA Energy Solutions.

What's your day look like as an energy analyst or a director of optimization services for energy solutions? What is that like?

[00:10:31] Marcus: So, with my track, I mentioned being in a drafting program out of high school. From there, went to an engineering firm and learned drafting. And from there went to another engineering firm where I took a position that was energy analyst, focused more on the energy aspect, rather than just the design.

So you design the building, you do the calculations, and you size the building appropriately so it can function. Then there's the aspect of energy to how that building envelope performs in terms of heat gain and heat loss when cold climates, hot climates. And then there's the systems on how those loads increase and decrease based on the occupancy of the space.

And so the energy analyst analyzes the occupancy, the weather variables, 'cause occupancy is a variable. Sometimes you expect a building to be occupied a certain amount of time, and it doesn't, so that impacts how the systems perform. 

The output of the utility bills is just an indicator of how it's performing, but diving deeper into the demand, when does it peak? And if anyone knows about the peak demand side in the peak of summer, there may be a turn all your lights off just so that everybody's on the grid with their lights on and air conditioning on in the peak of a hot summer.

So how do you shave that down? Analyzing energy is important because we're thinking about the resources that we extract energy from and then how we use them in our buildings individually. So that's where I then got into energy, to understanding that, okay, this is a whole different aspect of engineering, and I really like it because I'm touching the architectural side.

I'm working with the architects to understand their building envelope, their insulation, and how that affects the designers, the mechanical designer system. So that's the track from drafting into energy and analyst. And so focusing on that, I went from that engineering firm to Harvard University, and I was able to be an energy analyst there, but this is inside an organization.

They're hiring designers at this point. So inside the organization, I was leading up a measurement and verification program to where buildings were already completed. I would go and look at utility bills if there was energy meters. I was able to evaluate that to understand the energy consumption and the performance of those systems inside.

So it all comes full circle, and that's where I'm at now, is pulling my passion from that creative aspect, the energy analyst and all of that, and kind of rolling it into having a little bit more freedom as a consultant to express that and help organizations and designers.

[00:12:55] Dominique: I'm happy you mentioned the peaks and this idea of, overloading the grid because that's gonna become more and more relevant that we are mindful in measuring and looking ahead. And I'm hoping next time we can talk a bit more about what you see coming up on the horizon for our energy conversations and the things that,everyone should understand.

 I'm hoping we can do a little bit of a deep dive into how to think about those things. 

But I wanna clarify something. you've built all these skills throughout your career, so far. You're still in there.

But building from these different skill sets that come together to make you a very agile and experienced and valuable consultant. But it sounds like what you did at Harvard is you were like, "Wow, I'm good at this. What if I did this for multiple organizations in this town that I grew up in?"

Is that a fair way to understand what you're doing now with EA Energy Solutions, or is there a bit of a gap between the work that you do?

[00:13:47] Marcus: No, I love that point. I was with Harvard University, and then I moved to a couple other firms on the East Coast that were engineering design, what you would call MEP firms, mechanical, electrical, plumbing design firms. And so within those design firms, I was the energy and sustainability department that would support a lot of their projects on the energy aspect.

So I went from inside an organization working with consultants and professional designers to then back to the designer side, working back with owners. And so the back and forth kinda gave me a perspective about what's needed on the inside of an organization versus what consultants are thinking about and how they're pursuing, achieving success, a successful design, delivering a project. And so the passion that developed in me was people are often not able to either from lack of resources or budget concerns or just anything under the sun, to achieve a lot of the energy goals or sustainability goals that they would like to achieve because of the challenges of the process in many cases.

And so from an organization's perspective, what I started to build in my mind is, okay, we need to find a way to take information, find out what's important and then use those important details and then pull in making decisions in order to inform the CFO or the accounting team on what to do.

So being able to have insight from both sides, the consultant side and the organization side on capital planning, capital projects, it made me feel like I wanna help people understand the details and be an expert in translating those details, both from an organization and also from the professional designer side, so that I could help bridge the gap from the lack of achieving sustainability aggressive goals.

[00:15:30] Christy: I want to go back to this creative side just a little bit because you wear a lot of hats, as you've said. But you host Clear Haze Exchange podcast, and Dominique was on there as a guest, and I listened to that just yesterday too, by the way. I love it, recommend it.

But why did you start the podcast? What inspired you to do that?

[00:15:49] Marcus: Yeah. So that was good. So out of that passion that I was mentioning, often cases whether it's family or just people that I run into, they ask, "What do you do?" I say, "Well, I'm an energy engineer." And it's like, "Oh." Anytime you mention, engineering to someone, they're just like, "Oh, you must be like a, a brainiac or a technical person."

[00:16:05] Dominique: I like this idea of you might be a brain person.

[00:16:07] Christy: Right? It's true. 

[00:16:09] Marcus: That's the only way I could describe it. I guess that's the first thing that came to mind. And sometimes in the beginning, I struggled to explain what energy engineering is. 'Cause when you say engineering, people get it. And when you say energy, people might get it, but they might also think about, the guy that knock on your door is like, "Hey, I can get your rate down to three, four cents lower than what you're paying," and I'm not that guy either. So, I'm a little bit more on the technical side, helping you reduce your cost. But the passion was, I wanna help people understand this 'cause it's so valuable. So for me, I was able to see it. And even often working with engineers that are designing these things, they're not as knowledgeable on the energy side in some cases.

because they're focused on the design and making sure they size the systems right, which is fine, but there's less focus on the energy in some cases. I found that, and I felt like, I wanna help people understand through hearing the stories and people explaining not only just the energy aspect, the mechanical design aspect, but just sustainability in general.

It's such a broad term. And so there's a play on, of course, my last name, Clear Haze. It's kind of clearing the haze around sustainability, but in the built environment because there's so many different topics that people are just not clear on. And so the passion out of that was hopefully I could bring on guests that also inform me 'cause I like to learn about people like yourselves, that you have expertise in an area, you've seen a lot, and you've done a lot through each of your careers, and it's not understood often from people that really would like to understand it better and would like to provide more respect for what you do or what we do or what anyone does.

But then that also translates for them to take that practice into their own lives. So that's where the passion came from, is I wanna help people understand. Although I kind of avoided college and stuff, I really like educating and help people understand these things, so I actually taught on these topics as well.

it's easier to teach on topics when you know them and you have enough experience. it just comes out easier. You get over that nervousness about teaching in front of people when you actually have a good experience and confidence in knowing what you're doing.

[00:18:07] Dominique: Oh, yeah. For listeners, me and Christy are over here both just nodding away, of just like, "Yes, yes, that is so true." Marcus, I love what your podcast is doing because I think that for the fact that we all as humans exist so much in our built environment and energy touches us all day, every day, I think it is one of those topics that the majority of people don't understand.

And I think, the reaction you get from people when they hear about your job is just a sliver of the fact there's just, so much that we're just like, people pay their bills. They don't even know what they're paying for. I just think it's so important what you're doing. If anybody listening to this podcast is like, "I wish Christy and Dominique would talk more about energy," then, might I introduce you to the Clear Haze Exchange, where a real expert will talk to you about all these topics.

But I just think there is so much under that umbrella for you to get into, and it's so important because we do interact with our built environment all day, every day, and it is wild how much is behind so much expertise. And so I'm grateful you're doing that education.

I think you also are just a such a curious, detail-oriented, people-focused person. Even in the way that you will talk about how you've gotten initiatives moved along or how you navigate these conversations.you kinda drop that you're sometimes working with the CFO or engineers or designers. And I think you probably have so much skill set built in there around how to talk to different kinds of folks based on what their frame of reference is, their expertise, what they're actually concerned about, and, and what you're trying to get along.

But, that's something that I'm sure you learned over time. 

And if you think about younger you, do you have any advice for a younger version of yourself sitting where you are now with your wealth of knowledge?

[00:19:47] Marcus: Well, no, I appreciate the sentiment. So my parents are, I would say, marriage counselors, but they work with families to help them, whether it's marriages or just family in general, help them build a stronger marriage, a stronger family bond in whatever they're doing 'cause life hits you. And I think of myself in the energy space as sort of a counselor between architects, engineers, 

and owners because

an energy model touches all those different pieces, and I'm often finding ways, "Well, I know the architect doesn't want to give you that space, Mr. Engineer or Miss Engineer, but this is the reason why they're doing that," and try to translating that. Or, "Architect, the engineer needs that because the system..."

Not that I'm always doing that, but in my space and line of work, I'm often more communicative and an in-person. I wanna talk to somebody. I don't wanna just write an email. I'd rather talk to them and say, "So, why are you thinking that's off?" I'm not afraid of having a conversation.

And it's needed a lot in the space whereengineers are more thinking about the calculations, spinning their wheels in that way. And so I find myself telling my younger self that if I would've kept my head above the challenges of feeling like I needed to get a degree to validate myself and do all this, although all that stuff is important, and I'm not against getting your degrees.

But what I am for is understanding what you would like to get into career-wise through actually having a simple job. I mean, I worked at Kroger. I worked at a grocery store called Big Bear, and I was a bagger, and I worked in every department. And I got to experience different aspects of the different departments from produce to bakery to meat department and even the pharmacy, counting pills.

So those were different experiences that gave me an understanding and perspective. And then for my young self, I would've not been so heavy on pressuring, "You don't have a degree yet, and you don't have this yet, so you can't X, Y, and Z." And I would've tried to give myself more confidence in navigating the way I was navigating, because I was trying to understand what my passion was and where I could fit in in a career, rather than just jumping into school and spending the money because that's what you're supposed to do.

I like the path that I took, and I would recommend it for, how I mentor any younger people about thinking about it. Not to just not go to school, but get involved with the work that you think you might like, whether it's an internship or just a regular job.

Look at it as an experience. Customer service is an experience that fits into business. So all these things is the confidence I would give my younger self to continue with a different perspective coming up.

[00:22:16] Dominique: Your grit and ability to, take on so many different kinds of roles and bring those with you, I think is just so special, and that shows through in all the experiences we've gotten to hear about today. And I just think that's also notable. that feels like advice in itself take advantage of whatever opportunity you have, and there's something to be gained and learned and carried forward.

Knowing that even now you, still credit the customer service experience that was, which is so true. 

And I just think, we all get certain experiences in our lives, and the way you've carried all those with you, I think speaks volumes to the ways you work today and why you're so good at the things that you do. With one of those being your business now and your podcast, how can folks connect with you or follow along with your work?

[00:22:59] Marcus: The Clear Haze Exchange is available on all podcast platforms, I think most of them. Of course, Apple and all that.

There's a YouTube channel, CHE, which is the acronym for Clear Haze Exchange. I think it's dash 10. So there's a YouTube channel where you can actually watch my podcast on video, so you can actually see the faces of those people talking, which I don't know why I took on that 'cause that's more work. But anyways, 

[00:23:22] Christy: Yes, it is.

[00:23:22] Marcus: So there's the YouTube channel. Then there's of course, I'm heavy on LinkedIn for anyone on the business side that is on LInkedIn. There's also a page there that you can follow where clips are posted. Most recently, a clip with a conversation with Dominique and I.

Some great points that she made. And those will be posted there on LinkedIn, and I'm trying to explore out to X and I've had challenges with figuring that out. I'm not big outside of the business side of social media, so, bear with me. You can find me possibly on X as well, although I don't know how to speak the language.

[00:23:53] Dominique: I'm just posting stuff on there as well. Hey, there's too many platforms for all of us to learn.

[00:23:57] Marcus: I know. Hopefully I hit the main ones. And there's also a website. So feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. That's easy find, if you have any more questions.

[00:24:04] Dominique: And we'll put it all in the show notes, so don't you worry that if you missed anything, the buttons will be there. But it's nice to hear you tell them about it. Thanks Marcus. Thanks for joining us and having this chat.

[00:24:13] Marcus: Thank you.

[00:24:14] Christy: Each guest brings a different approach to sustainability. We're here to highlight the people doing the work that inspires others because climate action takes many forms.

[00:24:22] Dominique: As always, you can find our episodes and support the show at thegreenchampions.com. If you enjoyed the episode, you can follow, subscribe, leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. We're also on LinkedIn and Instagram @greenchampionspod. Our music is by Zayn Dweik. Thanks for listening to Green Champions.

 We'll be back with the second half of Marcus' success story in our next episode.