Career, Business & Soft Skills

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 […]

I’m far from a country boy, but I did grow up in a rural area with animals, playing in the woods, and cleaning out chicken coops. Like many of you, we would play most of the day outside without our parents knowing or worrying about where we were. Was that an “unsafe” way to grow […]

There’s a moral to this story, though it is a bit more of a cautionary tale than most I write. While it doesn’t rank with the story of three wise men or even Frank Capra’s Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life,” you may find some common threads with both learning wisdom and remembering why throwing […]

I was sitting in a session at the HVAC Excellence educators conference (which was excellent, by the way), and my phone buzzed. So, like a typical punk kid, I looked down at it to see that my friend Josh had sent me a Facebook message asking if we served the east side of Orlando because […]

One trait I’ve seen with good technicians is that they take their jobs VERY seriously, but they learn not to take themselves too seriously. A few months ago, I had someone tell me online that I must think I’m the A/C “god” because I’m always telling everyone the “right” way to do things. This got […]

Before we jump into the stuff that will make folks angry, let’s start with some common ground. Most of us can probably agree that the desired result of education in the trades is: Knowing what you are doing and doing it as safely, efficiently, and correctly as possible. If we can agree that we all […]

This is a business article I wrote several years ago. No hard-hitting tech tips, but I still hope you find it beneficial. “What would you do if you had a time machine.?” It’s a question that came up at least 17 times in your first week of 6th grade, answered with the typical “kill Hitler” […]

Our technician, Sam, sauntered into my office this afternoon like techs often do on a slow spring afternoon before the summer hits. It’s been a long day for me, lots of training prep, a bunch of little fires, and errands to stomp out, and I still didn’t get my article for the day written. I […]