Life & Work with Jaiden Waggoner of Texas, California, Florida, Missouri

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jaiden Waggoner.

Hi Jaiden, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I grew up in Spanish Fork Utah with an amazing and supportive family. My whole childhood I was obsessed with soccer and dreamt of being a professional soccer player one day. I was fortunate enough to receive a scholarship and play division 1 soccer at Utah Valley University while also receiving my bachelors degree in communications. After finishing my collegiate career my dream came true and I signed a professional contract to move to Las Vegas and play for the Las Vegas Lights. Shortly after signing my contract in 2020 covid was announced and we went through the toughest time in sports history. At the end of the season I decided to part ways with my dream of playing professional soccer and pursue a new dream of financial success. I had a couple of friends selling home security systems door to door that were telling me about how much money they would make only working 7 months out of the year. I decided to move to Houston Texas and pursue that. After 5 months of selling home security systems door to door I started to hear about the residential solar industry and the huge opportunity that was in that industry. I made the move to California to sell residential solar door to door and worked for several different companies. At each company I worked at I found things that I would do differently or things that I liked more about another company. I became obsessed with the solar industry and started learning/researching everything on not only the sales side but the operations and installation side as well. During the last company that I worked for I met some extremely talented people that wanted to transition a move back to Texas and so I made the jump and started my own company called Luminate Energy. We launched in April of 2023 in Houston Texas. We shortly expanded our markets to cover the entire state of Texas. After seeing huge success with that we expanded into 3 more states with Florida, Missouri and California with all states being statewide market coverage. I was really excited to get back into California since that is the state where I really fell in love with clean renewable industry and chose to make it my career there. In the state of California specifically we operate out of our partner distribution centers located in Riverside, Anaheim, Fresno, Sacramento and San Diego. Almost hitting 2 years in business the growth that we have experienced has been way more than I ever imagined. We were named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list class of 2025 which just goes to show all of the efforts and sacrifices of my team paying off. We are set to expand into 4 more states and 2 international markets by the end of this year and reach a target goal of 75 million in revenue. Luminate’s mantra is that we are on a mission to change lives through clean renewable energy. I truly believe we are making a huge difference in the world by changing the lives of our customers, employees, partners and the lives of everyone on the planet by pushing clean renewables energy. The solar industry is very young and there is a massive opportunity over the next 25-30 years. I truly believe our company is disrupting this industry and will become one of the titans of the space.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has absolutely not been a smooth road. Some of the early struggles we have faced have been policy changes. Governments at the state level have changed net metering rules for customers in different states. Banks interest rates and fees have gone up with the market as well. One of the struggles we also came across is that the bigger companies do not like young companies like ours seeing large success. Some of our larger direct competitors have tried to push us out of certain markets and make it harder for us to succeed.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am an entrepreneur that loves anything to do with building, creating, problem solving and competing. What I’m most proud of about my company is that at Luminate we have built an exceptional team that shares the same values, company wide we are willing to work harder for longer periods of time than the next company and we are all bought into the same vision. What I am most proud of in my personal career is that if you look at my resume, which ranges from being a soccer player, to door to door sales, to founding a solar installation company, none of these have anything to do with each other and they’ve all been extremely difficult, but I’ve done whatever it takes to reach my goals.

If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
I think the most important quality to success is being able to dream bigger than everyone, and then executing and outworking everyone to make that dream a reality. I am still learning things about the industry that I am in every single day but myself along with my team are willing to do whatever it takes to compete at the highest level with the best players in the industry. I am extremely competitive and treat business very similar to sports, I want my team to win and I want us to win on the highest scale possible with a vision and mission to impact the world for the better by transitioning everyone to clean renewable energy.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://luminate.solar
• Instagram: @jaiwagg and @luminate.energy