As an HVACR contractor and national chairman of ACCA, I can tell you that, when it comes to my industry, public policy has fundamentally ignored a key energy-efficiency issue for some time.

Managing employees is tough. Sometimes it feels like it would be easier to herd feral cats, right? Sure, that’s not always the case, but there are probably days when it feels like your employees require way more work to manage than they actually produce.

Financial power is what put me on an intentional path to make money at work versus working for what I called exercise and hoping the money would follow.

Even contractors who are diligent about training their teams often overlook their own personal training needs. Make sure you look for personal training opportunities to become a better business person, manager, and leader. Shore up your areas of weakness, whether it’s marketing or finance.

I have been an active member of the Better Business Bureau (BBB) here in St. Louis for more than 30 years. Through that time, I have learned some interesting things I’d like to share, which I believe will be worthwhile to contractors.

All companies are looking for ways to increase sales. An important avenue of revenue for any business that is oftentimes overlooked is add-on sales, which includes cross selling and upselling.

With summer quick-ly approaching, HVACR companies are gearing up for a busy season where they’ll be working long hours to serve customers.

You can’t operate your company effectively if it’s run on talking or, just as badly, run by issuing one-way memos. One-way memos are the type you plaster all over the place, like: “Clean up the bathroom. Your mother doesn’t work here.” Only one question left, “Is this form of running your company working?” The answer is: probably not.

There is the old saying about being a jack of all trades, but the sub-heading to that is master of none. I want to be able to tell our customers that we are masters of our trade and that our people are well-trained in the HVAC area, and that is the only area in which we specialize.

We’ve found many systems are delivering only 50 percent of their rated capacity into the indoor conditioned space. Combine poor installation and service-related issues with inconsistent maintenance practices or, even worse, a run-to-fail scenario, and we find that many systems operate far below the manufacturer’s Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) laboratory rated efficiency.