Why Bodhi joined OneEthos and the Climate First Corp. family

I think most people know the story of why I started Bodhi. 

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It started with a feeling I couldn’t ignore

It came from personal frustration as a first time solar customer.  At first, I assumed it was just my experience. But the more I talked to other solar homeowners, the more I realized it was anything but unique. The decision to go solar starts with excitement. People are making a major investment in technology they believe in and a future they want to be part of.   

But too often, they get something that feels more like a home contractor experience.  For anyone who’s ever remodeled their home, that’s generally not a compliment.  The solar experience is filled with confusion, silence, and second-guessing.  People pay $20k, $50k, sometimes $100k for something they believed in, only to be left wondering what was happening with their project, whether they had made the right choice, and who to call when they had questions.

That felt like a bigger problem than just bad communication. If we want solar adoption to happen at the scale and speed climate change demands, the customer experience cannot be an afterthought. It has to be part of the growth engine. Happy customers talk. They leave reviews. They tell their neighbors. They become the kind of proof that no ad can match. 

That idea was at the heart of why I started Bodhi: to make solar feel more connected, transparent, and human. Over the last few years, we built a product that installers and homeowners genuinely love. One of my favorite moments came when a project manager at an installer told us, 

“I love Bodhi more than I love my husband.” 

That line still makes me laugh, but it also meant a lot, because it captured something real. We built something that solved a painful, everyday problem for the solar pros on the frontlines doing the hard work. On the homeowner side, nothing made our team happier than seeing Bodhi mentioned in five-star Google reviews. It meant the experience was not just smoother operationally, customers could actually feel the difference.

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Then the market changed

But over time, a second realization became impossible to ignore.

The residential solar landscape has changed.

The loss of the 25D tax credit at the end of last year, on top of two difficult years driven by high interest rates, has fundamentally changed the economics of residential solar. At the same time, the industry has been hit by the reputational damage caused by bad actors, confusing offers of “free solar,” and homeowner experiences that erode trust instead of building it.

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Why we joined OneEthos

That is why Bodhi joined OneEthos and the Climate First Corp. family.

From the beginning, Bodhi has been about helping solar feel more human, more trustworthy, and more worth talking about. We proved that model. But the market changed. Financing matters more than ever. Trust matters more than ever. And to meet the scale and urgency of what the industry needs now, we needed deeper alignment between customer experience and homeowner economics.

OneEthos brings the financing approach rooted in transparency, affordability, and bank-backed reliability. Bodhi brings the customer experience layer that helps installers reduce escalations, earn more reviews and referrals, and build trust after the sale. Together, it’s a more complete answer to what this market now demands.

For installers, that means a clearer path to competing on trust instead of gimmicks. It means financing homeowners can feel good about when they sign. It means a better post-sale experience. It means a stronger operational foundation for growth. And for approved partners, it means Bodhi is included as part of that offering.

For homeowners, it means something simpler but just as important: more confidence. Confidence in the financing. Confidence in what is happening with their project. Confidence that they made a good decision. In an industry where anxiety often creeps in after the sale, that matters.

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A bigger opportunity ahead

I do not see this as Bodhi becoming less itself. I see it as Bodhi gaining the ability to do more of what it was built to do.

I’m proud of what our team built. I’m grateful to the installers who trusted us, to the homeowners who felt the difference, and to everyone who believed customer experience mattered in an industry that too often treated it as secondary. That belief is still the foundation. What is changing is the scale of what we can build on top of it.

The goal is still widespread solar adoption. The mission is still to strengthen the connection between people and the energy that powers their lives. But this moment in the market calls for bigger impact, faster. Joining OneEthos gives us the opportunity to do exactly that.

— Scott

P.S. If you’re an installer who wants to talk about what this could mean for your business or an entrepreneur who wants to talk about our journey, reach out. I’d love to connect.