Peter Hwang was home on the morning of April 21, 2007, a week before the launch of EnWise Power Solutions. His third start-up, EnWise was to be the ultimate green outfitter for Toronto-area homeowners. Its staff would assess the energy efficiency of clients' homes, recommend steps to improve it, then send contractors to sell and install high-efficiency furnaces, appliances and other energy-saving products. EnWise would also help homeowners finance the upgrades and stickhandle the necessary paperwork so they could receive federal and provincial rebates. Call it a post-Kyoto business model for a freshly Gored consumer market.
Hwang knew an article about the company was to run in that day's Toronto Star, but had modest expectations. "We thought that some people would call us [because of it]," he says. But, April 22 being Earth Day, the Star splashed a feature story about EnWise on the front page of a special section about the environment. The article detailed an EnWise auditor's plan to slash $1,256 from one Toronto family's annual energy bills. "I looked at it and thought, 'Oh my God.'"
It was nearly noon when Hwang opened his e-mail and found confirmation notices for some 260 home audits, all of them sent during the hours after the story's publication. This was magnitudes beyond his best projections—and well beyond the capabilities of his modest team. Inside of a half day's business, the company suddenly, happily, found itself saddled with a staffing crisis.
So began a hiring spree that increased EnWise's payroll from barely a dozen prelaunch employees to more than 100 by its first anniversary. The company had to grow fast enough to overwhelm rival start-ups in its niche, and smartly enough to outmanoeuvre established industry giants that were getting into energy audits. Bringing aboard enough of the right kind of bodies and brainpower has been the central challenge in the company's short existence, from assembling its executive team to hiring and training dozens of auditors, telephone and field sales reps, electricians and insulation specialists—all in a notoriously tight labour market. Complicating the task was the fact that Hwang and his partner, CSO Philip Winters (that's S for sustainability), knew almost nothing about running an energy business. Second-guessing decisions is a luxury they've rarely found time to afford. "Our competitors are Direct Energy, Reliance, Sears," says Winters. "We're not here to piss around for three years and grow slowly. We're here to be aggressive and really have an impact."
Hwang conceived the idea for EnWise roughly a year before its launch. The "hard-core capitalist" (Winters's descriptor for his partner) was running an equipment leasing and financing firm when he noticed a glut of financing applications coming from the environmental tech sector. Predicting the imminent greening of Canadian consumers, he began plotting how to enter the territory before it exploded. "From my past experiences in the finance industry, I knew this was a ready market," he says from the glass-walled boardroom of EnWise's headquarters in suburban Toronto. It's a casual Friday. Hwang's dress shirt is open at the collar; his close-cut hair is styled perfectly in place. The watch on his wrist shines almost as brightly as his teeth.
In September, 2006, Hwang was introduced to Winters. The self-described "radical environmentalist" had spent a decade working as a public policy advocate and political campaigner for "good, green" candidates in the United States and Canada. Since 2003, though, he had come to view business as the likeliest means of achieving his Earth-friendly ends. When Hwang asked him to join EnWise, Winters readily accepted. "I'm specialized in my part of the world. Pete is specialized in his part of the world. We entered into this industry that neither of us had much direct experience with," he says.
Hwang and Winters immediately approached their networks of friends and colleagues to recommend, and in some cases become, executive candidates. What they needed most was a head of operations. In late 2006, Hwang contracted Toronto corporate recruiting firm Campbell Clark, whose president he'd known for years. Gloria Campbell anticipated the personality type Hwang would want to hire. "Lots of people need to be in a tight corporate structure. They need to be part of a process, they need to be told what to do," she says. "We were looking for people who were not like that."
Campbell Clark installed itself as EnWise's external HR department. The firm mined several referral services and its own files to assemble a pool of executive candidates. It conducted preliminary interviews at its own offices, which included psychometric tests to get into the heads of potential hires and gauge their personalities. "Testing tells us whether or not you're aggressive, whether you're creative, whether you're a process-driven person," Campbell explains. EnWise initially requested what Winters calls "hybrids"—people who combined a green streak with business acumen. "Pete wanted the Xerox sales guy. I wanted the wilderness instructor who'd decided to break into the world of business," says Winters.
Meanwhile, the ops position remained open: The first guy to whom they offered the job turned it down, and none of the other candidates felt right. Hwang spoke to several Toronto contractors, hoping to forge installation partnerships, but found the people he approached dismissive of EnWise's survival chances. "We needed somebody who could go into that market and talk shop with these guys, because we weren't able to do it," Hwang says. Then Campbell Clark turned up Paul Hebelka, a veteran of the heating, ventilating and air conditioning industry. "Paul came in and said, 'It's simple. We'll call a guy who does this and a guy who does that, then we partner up with a group like that and we'll have an install crew,'" recalls Hwang. "I couldn't sign him up quickly enough."
Winters now calls Hebelka, who joined EnWise as employee number three, one of the company's "rock stars." Another star is the energy auditor who aired a list of grievances with EnWise's early training program—then presented his plan to fix it. Hwang considered hiring a consultant to address the issues; however, impressed by the staffer's candour and on-the-ground experience, he instead promoted him to manager of auditing services. Hwang is proud of this decision. "We're a pretty nimble company. In no way, shape or form have we pinpointed an employee to stay in the same position for life," he says.
In EnWise's earliest days, new hires personally ordered their workstations from Ikea when they arrived and had no place to sit. Soon, though, furniture deliveries couldn't keep up with all the new bodies coming through the door. Managers were working two to an office as the walls edged in.
In the spring of 2007, with two dozen new staffers set to start, expansion became necessary. So the company moved into a 10,000-square-foot office and sprang for a sleek metal-and-wood decor, with recycled-bamboo floors and walls painted chlorophyll green. The senior team figured it would take two years for EnWise to grow into the facility. For a while, there were too many telephones, too many computers, too many copy machines. Today, there's not enough of many things, particularly floor space. No one is working two to a desk yet, but elbow room isn't what it used to be. "Maybe four months ago, everybody knew everybody intimately," says Winters. "We ate lunch together, we went out together from time to time. And then it just exploded." But the close quarters have advantages, he adds. "We have everybody from the guy driving the truck to the person raising $8 million all sharing the same space. It makes the team hum better." Still, Winters says another move is imminent.
During Campbell's six months of follow-up care with her firm's hires, she says there were no complaints. Yet EnWise has already sloughed off the majority of the original sales staff of 12—the so-called hybrids, several of them environmental educators. "They were really smart and dedicated for the most part, but some could not handle the load of what we expected," says Winters. They were serving as both auditors and salespeople, an awkward combination of roles. EnWise has since split the functions, and turnover in sales has fallen to "next to nothing." With the benefit of hindsight, Hwang says he should have asked the consultants to seek out experienced sales pros: It's easier to train salespeople in environmental ideas than to teach environmentalists to sell.
As the number of employees surpassed 60, Hwang worried that his executive team's roles were starting to blur. For example, employee number six—Lindsay Boyd, senior marketing manager—was reporting to multiple supervisors, and the overlap was running her ragged. The problems were obvious to all. Winters says there wasn't enough clear communication among the executives, "and I was probably the worst of the bunch."
Enter Alex Gallacher, managing director at Engage Human Resources Solutions, an executive coaching firm. He found at EnWise a team unsure of where one position ended and another began. Engage spent six weeks immersed in EnWise's business model. Gallacher and his colleagues met with EnWise execs as often as twice a week, formalizing a compensation plan, organizational structure and ongoing recruiting strategy. "Our job," says Gallacher, "was making sure that energy was channelled in ways that were going to help grow their business."
This process was vital to preparing EnWise for future expansion, Winters says, even though the realignment bumped him out of the president's chair (Hwang was, and still is, CEO). Hwang had always been better at management, Winters admits, and the CSO title clarified what Winters was largely doing already: serving as the company's "ambassador" with the public. After Engage left, EnWise executives began working more independently. Winters personally delegated fewer tasks than he had before. "If you think it, do it yourself—that's a great tenet to live by," he says.
An athletic undercurrent pervades EnWise's corporate culture. Winters, an avid cross-country skier and hockey player, encourages sports participation as a tool for welcoming new faces and keeping the staff united. In his spare time, operations head Paul Hebelka scouts prospects for a hockey agency. His thirst for competition gives him something in common with Hwang, who credits varsity football with fuelling his drive. This year, the company joined a local
hockey league.
Still, the bosses make sure to draw a line between camaraderie and performance. "In this company, I have two really good friends who I grew up with working for me, and probably four or five more," Hwang says. "We still have a personal relationship outside of this [office], but they have to understand we're going to have highs and lows when it comes to our business relationship."
The parade of new faces is unlikely to stop any time soon. The company hopes to expand into commercial retrofits and new construction, and is looking beyond the GTA. "We could grow 10 times the capacity over the next 18 months if we want to—the demand is there," Winters says. (The partners, however, keep all financial information closely guarded.) The bonhomie in EnWise's headquarters will almost certainly change once the company starts opening satellite branches, possibly around Kitchener, Ontario. And Hwang has seen his mission shift from rapidly adding staff to ensuring quality hires.
"If we didn't have the synergy within the company, personality-wise, with everyone that's here, I'm not sure this would have worked," Hwang says. As for Winters, the radical environmentalist, he's come to appreciate all the rewards growth can bring. "The fact is, in saving the planet, protecting people's health and supporting the viability of the human race, there's a ton of money to be made."
