Butterfly

Spray Foam Magazine – Late Summer 2021 – The Green Cocoon LLC is a spray foam insulation company based in Salisbury, Massachusetts. The co-owner and vice president, Candace Lord, spoke to Spray Foam Magazine about how she fell in love with the spray foam industry and building science. “My husband, James Materkowski, had been involved with the business for five years when we started dating. About eight months into the relationship, his business partner passed away so I started doing backend stuff to help him. We got busy and he asked if I would measure a job for him,” recalls Lord.

The Green Cocoon is a family affair, with Lord’s husband being the company’s president and her brother-in-law a master sprayer. When Lord first entered her SPF career, she was the office manager for the company, and she worked her way up to vice president. She now handles most of the sales and marketing, with a heavy focus on education. Lord has now been in the industry for 10 years.

The Green Cocoon has 10 employees. Lord states, “As a manager, I like to use our core values as a guideline. I don’t like the word boss. I consider myself a leader of the team. I use the core values to empower the team and do what I say I’m going to do. Having trust in our company and in one another is important for employees to feel comfortable in their jobs. Everything I do is for the benefit of the team and not for myself.”

The Green Cocoon’s company ethos is People, Planet, Performance. Lord emphasizes, “People come first. We strive to give our customers exactly what they want, doing the job at the highest level of accuracy and cleanliness. We also work at making little to no negative impact on the environment with our work and the products we offer and use. Our business is hinged on honesty, transparency, and trust. We want our clients to feel comfortable throughout the entire process, from initial conversations through implementation and beyond.”

The company also stresses performance, and it is proud to deliver an energy-efficient insulation solution to residences and businesses throughout Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Southern Maine. In addition to this, they educate their potential clients about the need to have great insulation results using less fossil fuel and electricity, thus leaving a smaller carbon footprint.

Lord has an abundance of positive energy for her job and life in general and it’s this characteristic that helped her through a very tough period in her life. An 18-month breast cancer survivor, Lord is very thankful to be alive and get to go to work saying, “I am much more grateful for the opportunities that I have. I don’t look at my job as work. I look at it as an opportunity to help people and I didn’t miss a day of work during treatment. This company kept my mind off things and helped me keep a positive mindset giving me something to focus on. Now that I’m through all the treatments, I have realized that I could be six feet under and I’m not.”

Lord’s zest for life spills out into all corners of The Green Cocoon and giving back is an essential company feature. They not only give back financially, but also physically by attending many of the fundraisers they sponsor. The company also helps support women with breast cancer and sponsors events that help children with cancer and their families, such as Rhett’s Roost, Dover Food Pantry, and Breast Cancer Support, to name a few.

Lord is also a mother of two and a competitive athlete and fitness fanatic. She uses her fitness as a benefit in the workplace stating, “Being an athlete has helped me physically in my job because as a salesperson in the field, you have to be able to pull yourself into small attics, balance on cross beams and army crawl through really tight spaces. So physically I’m in great shape to do the work that I do. It has also helped with goal setting and being competitive in my job. I teach my sales team to set goals, stay focused and trust the process- much like I do in the gym.”

Speaking with Lord is a reminder to keep striving and give everything your best. After living the past year in our COVID induced cocoons, it’s now time to emerge as beautiful butterflies. As Lord likes to say, “Life is what you make of it, so make something great!”