Industry Blogs

By Ronda Chaney

Imagine you’re about to embark on the trip of a lifetime. Your destination is crystal clear — you can practically feel the sun on your face as you picture yourself relaxing at the end of the journey. But there’s a catch: You’ve got no map. No directions, no guide, just a vague idea of where you want to end up. Without a plan, you’re left guessing at every turn, risking delays, frustration, and failure.

Now, think about your business. Are you approaching it the same way? You might have a vivid vision of success — like the view from that dream vacation home — but how will you actually get there without a concrete business plan?

Developing a Plan

A business plan isn’t just a checkbox or a formality — it’s the backbone of long-term success and stability. As the saying goes, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” So, how do you craft a plan that drives your business forward? And how can you do it quickly and efficiently?

At its core, a business plan is about setting clear goals and identifying the strategies and actions needed to achieve them. But it’s more than just a to-do list. It requires owners and operators to take a hard look at their business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This honest evaluation comes from digging into past data across key areas like operations (staffing, equipment, inventory, workflows, technology), training (installation, service, sales), finances (startup costs, revenue projections, cash flow), and marketing (industry trends, target audience, competitors).

Once you’ve established benchmarks in these areas, the real work begins. Use this data to set ambitious goals and create a roadmap for success — a detailed, step-by-step guide for how to reach your destination. Though the process may seem overwhelming, breaking it down into small, manageable actions makes it more achievable. And don’t forget to celebrate each win, no matter how small — it’s all progress.

Strategic Financial Plan

While your business plan steers every decision, your financials serve as the high-octane fuel propelling your progress. Therefore, effective money management is essential for ensuring smooth sailing.

Consider the lessons of the past. Business owners must take a reflective journey before forging ahead. Analyzing financial performance — revenue, operating costs, or cash flow — provides crucial insights that inform future planning and decision-making.

When crafting your financial plan, begin with the end in mind. Visualize where you want your business to be in one year, two years, or even a decade. Establish financial milestones along this journey; these long-term goals will act as your guiding stars, illuminating the path ahead.

Next, develop an action plan that paves the path to achievement. What specific steps does your team need to implement weekly, monthly, or quarterly to reach these objectives? Emphasize that everyone plays a vital role in the process and establish personalized goals for each team member, as one missed individual goal can significantly impact the team’s overall success.

Establish deadlines and communicate your commitment to meeting these targets. Without timelines, even the best strategies can lose momentum.

Once your plan is underway, set key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor progress regarding profit margins, cash flow, customer retention rates, etc. Regularly reviewing such KPIs ensures your decisions are informed by data, keeping you agile and reactive.

As you reach each milestone, take time to assess your progress. If you find yourself veering off course, don’t hesitate to pivot; adaptability is just as vital as foresight — it’s easier to redirect your progress after one wrong turn rather than several.

Finally, embrace the journey with a willingness to learn and adjust. Getting there is half the fun!

Your journey to success comes from taking a series of small steps. At each milestone, you’ll gain valuable insights that will guide you forward. So, buckle up, strategize your route, and steer your business accordingly. With a solid plan and unwavering commitment, your destination is within reach.

Ronda Chaney is a head coach and trainer for Business Development Resources (BDR), the premier business training and coaching provider to HVAC contractors and distributors. She started her business management career in 2000 and entered the HVAC industry in 2009. Chaney’s career has included several tactical and strategic positions spanning administrative, sales, customer service, and departmental and division-level management roles.

By Heather Ripley

Most contractors never think about how important having a trained media team is until they are faced with a business or image crisis.

The thought of dealing with the press when you are going through one of your company’s worst times can be harrowing for even the most outgoing people.

While it is important to have a solid crisis public relations strategy during a disaster, the fact is that it’s important that your company have people trained to talk with the media, even when times are good.

A good PR partner will be able to train your staff on how to talk with the media comfortably during uncomfortable times.

Building Credibility

For most home service contractors, your reputation is one of the most important selling points you can have. If you’re known in the community as an honest service company that readily provides tips to homeowners, you will be seen in a positive light.

Just like a squeaky wheel gets the oil, a home service company that regularly provides timely and informative press releases on how to make your heating system more efficient or provides tips to keep a home safe from carbon monoxide leaks will get noticed by your local media. Keeping your name top-of-mind means that the media knows who to call when they need a quote from a home service professional ahead of bad weather or after a crisis.

While a PR team can help you craft the releases that get you noticed, you will want trained spokespeople from your company when it comes time to appear on camera.

Controlling the Narrative

If you’ve ever been interviewed by a reporter, you know that sometimes the questions may seem challenging or off topic.

We’ve all seen interviews that go “off the rails,” and the interviewee says something that can be misconstrued or taken out of context.

Your public relations partners should be able to help you prepare to answer questions in a way that informs but also keeps you on message. You don’t want to write out a script—that can make you sound boring and non-responsive. But you do want to steer conversations so that you’re able to speak confidently about what you know.

Once you have learned some tips, you need to practice them so you are able to stay on message.

Have a trusted coworker or friend ask you questions on camera and then review your interview. If you wander off topic, talk too much, fidget or say, “um,” too often, keep practicing until your interview style is tight.

Making Every Opportunity Count

The most important thing to remember about media opportunities is that they are always a chance to talk about your business to new audiences and potential clients.

With this in mind, here are a few quick tips to make your interview more compelling:

• Answer in full sentences. Nothing is duller than to watch an interview where their only response is “yes” or “no.”
• Talk in sound bites. The media always likes to use a full quote. In order for your comments to always be taken in context, speak as though your words will be a sound bite.
• Say your company name. You don’t want to be too obvious, but if you say sentences like, “At XYZ Plumbing, we…” then complete your thought, you will be able to keep your name top-of-mind.
• Remember that you’re the expert. The media came to you because you know your stuff. Practice, prepare and be confident.

Heather Ripley is founder and CEO of Ripley PR, an elite, global public relations agency specializing in the franchising, skilled trades and B2B tech industries. Ripley PR has been listed by Entrepreneur Magazine as a Top Franchise PR Agency for seven consecutive years and was recently named as one of Newsweek’s America’s Best Public Relations Agencies for 2024. Heather Ripley was recently named as a 2024 PRNews Top Women honoree in the business entrepreneur category. She is also the author of “NEXT LEVEL NOW: PR Secrets to Drive Explosive Growth for your Home Service Business,” which is now available on all audiobook platforms. For additional information, visit www.ripleypr.com.

By Heather Ripley

What do Croc-Tarts, the presence of lithium at more than 1,400 feet at the Tonopah Flats Lithium Project in Tonopah, Nevada, and Henry Kissinger’s death at the age of 100 have in common?

They were all press releases that informed, educated or delighted readers in 2023. And they not only announced real news, they also hooked readers by sparking a conversation about what each of these events meant to the reader right up front.

While your home service company may not have news that will go viral on social media, what you do have to announce is important, nonetheless. That’s why you need to ensure that your press releases are relevant, concise and engaging.

A well-written press release can give your home service business that extra something that sets you apart from your competition in several ways.

Consistently providing informative press releases introduces your company and expertise to local media outlets. Quality Heating, Cooling, Plumbing & Electric Vice President Cassie Pound is regularly called upon by the media in her Tulsa, Oklahoma, service area to provide homeowner tips and to give her opinion on issues related to the skilled trades industry.

Boosting Your Thought Leadership

Is a cold snap on your area’s horizon? Or, is bad air plaguing your city? These may seem like standard events, but as an expert plumber, you can advise homeowners how to save their pipes from the cold, or, as a professional HVAC owner, you can provide tips on improving indoor air quality (IAQ).

Local news outlets probably will be doing stories on these events, so, by getting your name out to them through a series of ongoing press releases, you can let them know you have advice to provide. Be the thought leader in your area that the media turns to when they need a quote about home safety and protection.

Building Your Reputation

By providing thought leadership to homeowners in your area, you can also build your reputation as a helpful service provider.

If your team is raising money or charitable donations for your favorite local charity, letting the public know of your efforts can also help your reputation. Being seen as someone who cares for the community is something more and more people consider when hiring a new service provider.

Expanding Your Audience

Your marketing team has worked hard to build your target audience and knows who your ideal customer is. However, there’s something to be said about refreshing your audience every so often, too.

When you issue a press release, you never know who is going to see that release, remember your name, and call upon you when they need service.

Improving Your SEO

And speaking of your marketing team, they will love one of the other side effects of issuing press releases on a consistent basis: it improves your search engine results.

When Google sorts its searches, it gives a higher ranking to those sites that are mentioned in other places. If your name shows up on your local news’ site or in a trade publication, Google will view it more favorably.

An effective press release strategy helps you establish relationships with the media and your local community. But, in order for it to be effective, you need releases that are consistent, tell a story and engage the public.

But if you’re better at writing business plans than at telling a story, you might need a public relations team to help you better tell your story. A PR partner that understands your business can help you write engaging and topical press releases while simultaneously using its contacts in the media to get your name out.

So, step away from your competition by considering a PR partner that can help you spark conversations.

Heather Ripley is founder and CEO of Ripley PR, an elite, global public relations agency specializing in the franchising, skilled trades and B2B tech industries. Ripley PR has been listed by Entrepreneur Magazine as a Top Franchise PR Agency for seven consecutive years and was recently named as one of Newsweek’s America’s Best Public Relations Agencies for 2024. Heather Ripley was recently named as a 2024 PRNews Top Women honoree in the business entrepreneur category. She is also the author of “NEXT LEVEL NOW: PR Secrets to Drive Explosive Growth for your Home Service Business,” which is now available on all audiobook platforms. For additional information, visit www.ripleypr.com.

The other day I performed a Google search for ‘How to detect an air leak’. Not surprisingly it came up with millions of results, over 18 million in fact.

Whether solving the problem in a commercial establishment or a domestic home environment, the majority of search results pointed to one solution. Namely, soapy water!

Before we all ridicule the idea as belonging to a bygone era, take a vehicle with a slow puncture to a tyre fitting depot and the chances are they remove the wheel and spin it in water to determine the leak. It’s a simple time proven method for determining leaks from pressurized systems.

But of course, not all equipment can be placed in soapy water. What if a system is known to be losing pressure and yet the lines carrying the compressed air from the source are located 10 metres above the ground, and dismantling the system is out of the question? Thankfully there is a fast and effective solution to hand.

Each time air or indeed any gas, leaks from a pressured system there is an associated sound. If the leak is significant, it can be audible to the human ear and therefore easily identified and rectified accordingly. However, most leaks in high pressure systems are extremely small and are out of the range of a human ear.

Think about a pressured air system on a large factory delivering compressed air from a bank of compressors to various stages of production throughout the manufacturing process. The chances are there are hundreds if not thousands of connections in the form of joints, reducers, valves, elbows, condensers etc. Each of these has the potential to leak small amounts of air, reducing the pressure of the system.

One leak might make very little difference but multiply this by the number of potential leaking joints and efficiency can be significantly compromised. The compressor will seek to compensate for any pressure loss by simply working harder. However, as any engineer will know, compressors can be expensive to operate in terms of energy and therefore will certainly increase an operators energy consumption.

With electricity costs being so much higher in Europe due to geopolitical factors in recent years, most companies are seeking to reduce the amount of energy used. Having a compressor work overtime to compensate for leaking joints is certainly not something senior management would smile about!

These scenarios are certainly not uncommon, in fact one European compressor manufacturer has stated that in some industrial settings, up to 80% of air generated is lot in leaks. So clearly identifying these small leaks can make a real difference to a company’s energy bills.

Although the sound produced by a small leak is inaudible to the human ear a high performance acoustic imaging camera such as the FLIR Teledyne Si2 – LD will have absolutely no problem identifying the source. Launched earlier this year the camera is capable of detecting leaks of 0.05 litres per minute at a distance of 10 metres, meaning those elevated air lines pose no problem for this latest instrument in the FLIR acoustic imaging camera line up.

For closer work the camera is even more sensitive and can detects minute leaks of 0.0032 litres per minute at a distance of 2.5 metres. Coupled with this improvement, the third-generation camera has improved microphones now capable of detecting sounds over an extremely wide frequency range, namely 2 – 130 kHz.

Areas of plant are often dark or dimly lit. for this reason FLIR have fitted the FLIR Si2-series of cameras with two powerful LED lights to make component identification easy even in poorly lit conditions.

Of course, it’s not just compressed air that the camera is capable of detecting; noise emitted by any escaping gas is identified by the powerful microphones. However that’s only part of the story.

The FLIR Si2-LD has built in software termed Industrial Gas Quantification. If the leaking gas is ammonia, hydrogen, helium, or carbon dioxide, very commonly used gases in a number of industries, the software is capable of quantifying the financial loss caused by the leak. By simply entering factors such as the cost per litre, the software identifies the amount each leak is causing over a given period of time. Such data is invaluable to financial analysts and senior management within an organisation.

It goes without saying that the financial considerations are only one aspect of leaking gas. The gases mentioned above all carry significant health hazards and can present a variety of dangers to personnel if allowed to leak for any period of time. Ammonia and carbon dioxide can cause serious breathing problems and asphyxiation even in smaller concentrations, whereas hydrogen can explode in the presence of oxygen. Clearly the cost of such problems goes way beyond any financial considerations.

We’ve come a long way since the ‘soap and water’ approach. See how the latest technology from FLIR Teledyne can help in reducing downtime, lower energy bills and improve safety in your organisation.

Visit www.flir.com or contact you local FLIR Teledyne agent or distributor.

Author: Darrell Taylor

Email: Darrell.Taylor@teledyne.com