Career, Business & Soft Skills

For years, I've worked with and around people who view work, problems, and goals differently than I do. I've often told my wife that I have an issue managing and leading administrators, salespeople, and other inside staff. Why? It's because I just don't communicate in a way they seem to like. It's been 20 years […]

It was an awkward conversation, bringing a technician nearly twice my age into my office for a talk. “I'm good at fixing units. I'm not some fancy-talking sales tech,” the technician half-mumbled as I sat looking at him. “The customer complained that you made them feel uncomfortable, you were unfriendly, and you tracked dirt in […]

Training is important for businesses of all industries, but it’s especially vital to the success of your HVAC business.  When new people join your team, you need to be able to teach them the basics of your team’s operations, such as how to report time and log their travel expenses. Then, they must get up […]

In the residential HVAC industry, technicians are faced with customers every day. Each interaction presents its own set of unique challenges since no two customers are ever the same. While the variety of people we may encounter is wide, the HVAC technician's variety of soft skills and intuitive ability to communicate needs to be even […]

Every year. We watch it EVERY YEAR, and it still gets to me again and again. Call me a sucker, but especially living a blue-collar life working in the trades, It's a Wonderful Life describes the way many of us live. Even more so, it captures the way we can start to feel about our […]

  “What do you want to be when you grow up?” “Where will you go to college?” Young people hear those questions all the time. Although we ask those questions in good faith, they also carry a burden of expectations.  By asking those questions, we imply that we expect the children to go to college […]

Business isn’t easy. Generally, when I look back at how much work it has taken to get a business off the ground, I wonder what I would have done if I had known what I know now. I wonder if I still would have been willing to put in all that work all over again. […]

When working in a business with people, you have two options: 1. Become bitter as you experience people, life, and issues. 2. Grow from experiencing people, life, and issues. I’m not proud to say it, but I realize now that when I started my business and had bad experiences, I would run to option #1 […]

When you think of a salesman, what comes to mind? Do you imagine a quiet person who helps you solve your problems by listening and evaluating you as a customer? Probably not.  When most people hear the word ‘salesman,' they imagine a flashy personality who will talk to you for hours to try to get […]