Today we’d like to introduce you to Abby Buchmiller.
Hi Abby, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’m the youngest of seven kids. We moved a lot and didnt have much. My parents were kind and loving and worked constantly. I come from a long line of coal miners and tradesmen, so the trades have been part of my life from the very beginning.
Two months into my junior year of high school, I got kicked out. The school told me they’d given it a good shot with me, that I was a poor influence on the other kids, and that they wanted to make an example of me.
I wallowed for a few weeks. Then I found an alternative program that let me work and move at my own pace, and I ended up finishing with my diploma six months early.
And honestly, that theme has repeated itself many times over in my life. Loss, short period of reflection, Then I go looking for what’s still available to me in the wreckage- and it’s usually find it’s more than what I lost.
I’ve been married for 23 years and have 4 children- 3 still at home and our oldest in the military with a child on the way, making me (a very excited) soon-to-be grandma,
I’ve spent twenty years in the electrical trades, ranging from oilfield services to residential solar., but never hands-on in the field. Ive had the opportunity to learn, work and build in all different sides of business and had a hand in every supporting function that has to be on point for anyone in the field to do their job well- Scheduling, Dispatch, Safety, People Ops, Sales, Marketing, Contract Management, Tech Ops and more. I got to learn hands- on the parts of business I liked, disliked, and where my natural strengths were.
I’ve never been a tradesperson and I don’t pretend to be. My job is to build the machine that lets them do their best work, be seen for it, and get paid on time.
We ran family businesses in oil and gas for about fourteen years. In one of our bottom-out stretches I made a lateral move into solar, co-founded a national installer in 2017, and it grew like wildfire.
Zero to $250 million in four years. More than 500 employees, over 900 sales reps, roughly eighteen states, and we bootstrapped the whole thing.
The rapid growth caught up with us in a big way. We needed cash, and we made the hard decision to sell so the business could have its best shot at succeeding. The buyer didn’t honor the agreement, and within months the company was gone.
Radicl is what I built after. It’s the company I wish had existed when we were trying to scale a quality national contracting organization. Contractors sell more work than their field teams can execute, so they either hire ahead of demand and eat the overhead when volume dips, or they miss timelines and lose customers. We’re the third option. Verified technicians on demand, coast to coast, with quality control running live while the tech is still on site.
We’ve completed more than 25,000 missions across 49 states, served over 20,000 homes, and paid more than $6 million out to the field agents doing the work. That last number is the one that means the most to me.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Definitely not a smooth road.
We built that company from zero to $250 million in four years, and I lost all of it in 2021. Rapid growth caught up with us. We needed cash, and selling was the decision we made to give the business its best chance at succeeding.
The buyer didn’t honor the agreement. They didn’t take ownership of the debts they had agreed to assume, and within months the company was gone. What followed was a five-year legal fight where I spent an enormous amount of money proving something I already knew. I lost everything I owned. Not just the business. Everything.
It took a solid 3 years before I could even see through the storm, and the rebuild is genuinely still going.
Here’s what I got wrong. I thought that because i owned my own business, I was in control of my own destiny. I wasn’t. I had built a company that ran entirely on my face and my presence, and at the end of the day, had zero control over. It could not survive without me in the seat, and I called that dedication when it was really a weakness. I had also never been specific about what I was building for myself. I built something that meant a great deal to a lot of people and ate me alive, because I was purposeful about everything except the one thing I was supposedly doing it all for.
Losing that business took my autonomy in a way I’d never experienced. And that’s exactly why I couldn’t leave it there. If something takes your control away and you let it stay taken, it gets to keep defining you. So I went looking for what was actually mine in it. Nobody can take the experience. Nobody can take the grit or the lessons. If I could find the value in what was left and turn it into something, that was the return on all those years.
I was Abby, CEO of one of the largest residential solar companies in the country. And then I was nobody anyone knows on the street. People dehumanize you in both directions. You’re someone’s hero one moment and they’re throwing stones the next. I had to figure out who I was without the company attached. Without the boos or the praise.
The most useful advice I got in the worst of it: when you’re too deep in it to know what you want, start writing down what you don’t want. I don’t want a tumultuous partnership. I don’t want to feel that particular way again. Your list of what you’re done with will show you who you are, so much faster than trying to force a vision.
I had to learn to trust. Both in myself again, along with trusting others. I questioned everything and learned to sit in long, prolonged, discomfort. One of the best teachers there is. I got close to god through a deep gratitude practice and learned more abput myself each day,
Healing isn’t linear. There are still hours where I feel lost. But four going on five years out, what I have is an absurd amount of gratitude. I got to see things most people never will.
And if you’re in the middle of your own fire right now- take care of yourself first. A depleted founder builds desperate businesses, and I paid full price to learn that. I promise you… one day you’ll thank yourself for not giving up.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Radicl?
Radicl is operations infrastructure for solar and home services contractors. Site surveys, engineering design, roof and insurance damage assessments, install verification, and ongoing maintenance, all on demand.
What sets us apart is not complicated. We’re the only national provider whose technicians physically access the roof on every single survey. A lot of this industry moved to satellite imagery because it’s cheaper, and that’s how you end up with a change order and a homeowner who’s now waited three extra weeks for a system they already signed for. Our first-time yield rate is 98.7% and our go-back rate is 1.31%. Those numbers come from boots on roofs and standards we refuse to bend, and I’m really proud of that.
We’ve tapped into the gig economy and brought the “uber” model in to home services as the backbone of how we operate. Allowing our national key clients to build operations nationally, paying for resourced when, and whrere they need it only- solving one of the biddest fibancial problems plaguing the space today, the inability to standardize operating costs- ultimatelt allowing our partners to unlock profitable growth and scale. The other benfefit our model provides is speed. Our flagship service, Dynamiq Design, sends a completed survey straight into a live marketplace of verified designers, so permit-ready plans come back in hours. The industry average from survey to design is about ten days. We run 48 to 74 hours.
But the part I most want your readers to know is why I built it this way.
The most rewarding thing I have ever experienced in business is putting somebody in a position to find their own magic. Not to hand them a job. To hand them a setup where their specific talent becomes obvious, first to everyone else and eventually to them. Watching someone prove to themselves what they’re capable of… that’s the whole return for me. It’s the stuff that lights me up.
Radicl is that idea turned into a company. There are skilled tradespeople all over this country who are excellent at their craft and completely invisible to the businesses profiting from their work. Our platform lets them claim their own availability, their own region, their own tools and certifications, and get paid on time for what they’re genuinely good at. Over $6 million has gone out to those field agents. I want to be remembered for changing the environment so that people who work really hard for their money can do better for themselves and their families.
Everything I learned the expensive way went into that design. You don’t build something that only works when you’re in the room. You build something that makes the people around you more powerful.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I rebuilt myself through breathwork and meditation, and I used to be the person who said flatly that she couldn’t meditate with a noisy brain and hutle culture at the forefront of my driving force.
After 2021 I went quiet for a while. What actually moved me was breathwork, because it starts with the body and lets the mind follow. In a few of those sessions I was able to picture the specific people I had wounds around, and I could feel their side of it. Their pressure, their fear, what they were carrying. Whether I invented some of that is honestly irrelevant. I found real forgiveness in there, and I couldn’t take a step forward until I put that weight down.
So yes- the CEO of a labor logistics company runs on guided meditation and a breathing practice. The spreadsheets are still there, I promise. But the reason I can look at a bad quarter without spiraling is that I did the other work first. I’ve focused purposeful effort into becoming the person who is capable and has the capacity to hold everyhting that I desire. A safe, trustworthy foundation to be built upon. Taking each of the scars and mistakes of my past as inspiration for the future version of myself Im building.
People also assume anyone who talks this much about the trades came up in the field. I didn’t- I’ve spent twenty years building the systems and processes around the field teams, and that’s exactly why Radicl works. I’ve been close enough to the field my whole career to know exactly where it breaks for them, and my job has always been to fix it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.abbybuchmiller.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abbybuchmiller/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/abbybuchmiller/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abbybuchmiller/
- Other: https://www.getradicl.com
