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Born Into the Trade
For me, HVAC wasn’t a choice so much as a childhood soundtrack. I spent many summers riding shotgun with my dad, learning how to read HVAC systems and how to read people. By high school, I was running new construction crews and managing projects that most teens couldn’t imagine, simply because I had seen it done.
The field has given me plenty of wild stories. I have crawled into houses with raccoons in the walls, chased down stray pigs that homeowners tried to keep warm inside, and once found a nest of copperheads under an old water heater. Those moments are funny in hindsight, but they speak to the unpredictability of our work and to why practical experience matters. You can learn a lot from a textbook, but you only understand systems when you have had to fix one at a backwoods mountain house with three creeks to cross on the way in and out.
Education Meets Experience
School came next, but I did not trade the job site for a desk. I majored in Entrepreneurial Business at Western Carolina University because I wanted to understand the mechanics of business as well as the mechanics of equipment.
My dad was a brilliant technician, and he could fix anything. What I needed was the other half: how to grow, scale, and sustain a business. That education paid off. In 2010, I was named Western Carolina’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and that entrepreneurial drive has been the thread through everything since.
From Warehouse to Territory Sales
After college, my now-wife Kristen and I moved to Greenville, South Carolina. I started in the warehouse at large nationally know distributor, sweeping floors and pulling orders, and eventually worked my way up to assistant branch manager. That early distribution experience taught me how the supply chain really runs and why good contractors deserve salespeople who have actually been in the field.
Too many distribution representatives were paper salesmen, and I wanted to be the kind of person who understood the work because I had lived it. That mindset helped me land a Territory Sales Manager role with a regional distributor covering Georgia and North Carolina, where I spent a decade building relationships, earning multiple sales awards, and learning that respect is never handed to you, it is earned one honest interaction at a time.
In 2023, I joined a commercial manufacturer rep firm that was looking to develop and grow a residential and light commercial division across the Carolinas. The stint did not last, as private equity changes shuttered the residential arm in early 2025, but it only reinforced a belief I have held from day one: the trades are driven by relationships, not ownership groups. That truth made the next move easy. When a former rival but respected colleague called with a new opportunity, it felt like the right place to keep doing what I love: developing people, helping teams win, and following a motto I admire, “Win as one. Win together.”
Storytelling and the #TradeCrew
Outside of distribution and sales, I have always chased the craft of storytelling. For years, I wrote about the Premier League, Formula 1, and Major League Baseball, and in 2020, I launched the HVAC R&D Podcast [EG1] to bring that same curiosity to our world.
The podcast grew into the #TradeCrew, a community of technicians, contractors, distributors, and manufacturers who believe that collaboration beats competition. It has been one of the most rewarding parts of my career: putting the microphone on people who actually do the work, helping support and fund workforce programs, and showing young people that the trades are not a fallback, but a future.
Giving Back to the Trades
If there is one piece of advice I give to newcomers, it is simple: get your hands dirty. Spend time in the field. Learn how to braze, sequence of operations and how systems communicate with one another, and how a well-timed conversation with a contractor can open doors that a CV never will.
A few years in the field do not box you in. You can move into distribution, manufacturing, sales, or even start your own shop. HVAC and all trades give you options.
At the end of the day, what drives me is giving back. From workforce donations to mentorship and podcast conversations, I try to be the person who opens doors for others the way people once opened doors for me.
Whether I am on the road visiting customers, recording an episode, or coaching a teammate, my goal is the same: show up, be real, and help move the trades forward one conversation at a time.
