AirOne: Providing Service And Community With Sheila And Lance Beck

Posted on October 10, 2022

Sheila and Lance Beck own a heating and cooling business in San Marcos Texas. This husband-and-wife couple are uber dedicated to providing incredible service that creates a healthy living space. That means they will recommend services that benefit the customer, not their bottom line. They also dedicate a large amount of time to educating local students, training their technicians, and giving back to the community.

Today, they join Steph Silver to share the story of how AirOne, their HVAC service company, came to be and how they’re building a profitable business by providing better service and getting involved with the community.

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Listen to the podcast here

AirOne: Providing Service And Community With Sheila And Lance Beck

This episode is part of a local series focused on Wimberley Valley organizations in partnership with Wimberley Valley Radio and brought to you by Ozona Bank. Our guests are Sheila and Lance Beck, owners and operators of AirOne. In addition to their awesome commitment to the community, AirOne Heating and Air Conditioning has been servicing residential and commercial HVAC clients in Central Texas for over 35 years with service areas, including Wimberley, Kyle, San Marcos, and Buda. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much for having us.

Thank you so much.

You’re welcome. I’m excited to dig in. We have worked together a little bit. I know a lot about your story. I’m excited to share it because you are so committed to doing a fantastic job for all of your customers and employees and giving back to the community. Let’s start with Lance. The story of how you got into and involved in AirOne is phenomenal. Can you take us back to the very beginning?

I started working full-time when I was thirteen. I was homeschooled, so I did school at night, but I worked with my dad doing painting. I did that for seven years. Through that time, I realized that I hated painting. I was not good at it. My mother encouraged me to get into one of the trades, specifically plumbing, electrical, or air conditioning. She’s extremely studious. She looked around and found that the company that had the best reputation at the time was AirOne Air Conditioning. She strongly encouraged me to apply for a job there. That’s what I did.

I was nineteen when I went in there. I had no experience, but I applied. They didn’t hire me because I had no experience. I applied once a month for a year until they finally decided that they would give me a chance. The owner, Ernest Murray or Ernie and Jane, owned the company at that time. Ernest took me under his wing and did an apprenticeship program with me. I would go in 2 to 3 times a week in the evening. We do classroom theory. He threw me in a truck. I got hands-on as well. That was how I got into the trade. Fifteen years later, I ended up buying the company from him when he retired.

Did he, during those fifteen years, teach you the business of AirOne in addition to the trade?

No. It was unexpected. I don’t think he ever intended to sell his company. His wife was a longtime survivor of very rare lung disease. She ended up succumbing to her illness. At that time, he wasn’t the same. They ran that thing together. At that point, he was done. He made the offer to me. He still thought he had many years left in him.

He probably did. Has his life not changed?

He moved to be with his grandkids. He’s still very active. If he had it in him to run the company, he would still be running it.

When you took it over, you had been working for him for fifteen years. Did you change anything right away? Were you under the water or the depths of now owning your business?

We tried not to change too much at the beginning because I didn’t know much about running a business. We maintained the status quo and started working a lot.

Sheila, you’re here with us. Did you get involved in the business right away as well?

We bought the business in 2014. It was April 2014. I took one month off because I was working an accounting position at another company. I took one month off to prepare my mind for what was about to happen. We hit the ground running after that in June. That’s when it started picking up for summer. At the moment, we were trying to keep up with the demand. We weren’t in our planning stages yet.

It was trying to help as many homeowners with their AC. We were in emergency mode at that time. I was not fully prepared for it, but we were very grateful that two of the original employees stayed along with us because they saw our potential and how we could grow the business. They have stuck with us until this day. We are extremely grateful for them because we could not have done what we have done without them.

The other thing that I find wonderful about the way you run your business is that you look at the whole system or the whole house. Can you tell us how you got from emergency mode, getting people’s ACs back working during the heat of the summer or the heater in the winter? Those are what people think of when they think of HVAC. Tell us how you transitioned from that Band-Aid fix-it to where you are now and what that means.

What we realized very early on was that we didn’t know how to run a business. We didn’t know how to grow this thing to where we wanted it to be. We didn’t know how to get out of emergency mode because we were either in emergency mode because we were trying to get to everybody or we were in emergency mode because it’s winter in Texas, and we’ve got no work.

We realized that we needed coaching. We started doing some coaching. What we realized through that was the coaching companies that we were working with were encouraging us to pursue a traditional or what has become a traditional format or formula for your company, which is to sell. Most companies will have more salesmen than actual technicians. Most technicians are there mostly to generate sales leads.

This is how the industry has taught us. It’s not per se the contractor’s fault. It’s what I was starting to become because that’s what I was taught and it’s how I was taught. It was always in the back of my mind that I didn’t like that so much because, as a result, we end up inevitably in that format, encouraging people to replace their system when it might not be time or to throw these gadgets in a system that’s going to solve all their problems.

That being said, there were also so many different issues that I would come across in a house that I didn’t know how to fix. I didn’t have good explanations for customers. That bothered me and my conscience because I feel like I should be able to provide these things. Eventually, through my search for coaching companies, I hooked up with a good company out of Atlanta, Georgia, called Freedom Builders.

Both of us hooked up with companies throughout the nation that are doing the same things, building science, focusing on the home as a system instead of the HVAC system, trying to find long-term solutions for people’s problems, and not just focusing on energy or comfort but also the health of the home and the health of the individual inside the home. That helped us to feel good about what we were doing because we’re a business. We have to make money, but they helped us with finding out how to grow our company and stay profitable while not neglecting our moral compass. We found a way to do that and run a business.

You figured out with the help of this company how to build a profitable business by providing better service.

That’s exactly the way that I should have said it.

You said it all perfectly. One of the reasons we have this show is to highlight that it is the best way to run a long-term or generational business. AirOne is a second generation because you’ve taken it over. The reason that you’re thriving is that you are focused on that service. Sheila, you are focused on giving back to the community and your employees. We will talk about that as well. That’s what helps generate your referrals. You don’t have to say, “Buy this whole new system,” when they don’t need it. Talk to me a little bit more about what it means to look at the whole house as a system versus somebody’s AC stopping working so you replace it. It’s the traditional model. Tell us the difference.

This is how the industry wants us to do it. You get a call that the AC is broken. You go and fix the part. You might try to tack on some add-ons, some gadgets, or some things like that, but ultimately, that’s it. You leave. Looking at the house as a system, we have to look at all the equipment. That’s where we start because we are AC guys. We start with the equipment.

Here’s one thing that we see very often in HVAC equipment inside the home. The split system or the air handler is usually in an attic. When we open it up, we often find mold or bacterial growth. It’s mold. There are hundreds of different variants of the stuff. I’m not afraid to say it. It is what it is. Why is that in there? We can look at the duct system. Usually, it’s made with compressed fiberglass. In our area, it’s made with a compressed fiberglass duct board with flexible duct runs that saturates inside the duct board. How did it get in there?

What we have to do is, at that point, start taking a whole look at the house. Why is mold growing? For one thing, mold eats dust. If you’ve got a more dusty house, you get that dust inside the HVAC system. You’ve got plenty of food for the mold to eat. Why is there so much dust in the house? We still have to start doing infiltration testing. Most of the time, these days, the penetrations, the wires, the can lights, and everything is not sealed. Dust will come in from your attic.

We have to look at other things. That’s one example. There’s so much to it. Proper ventilation, fresh air coming in that is dehumidified and filtered before it comes in, proper dehumidification as well, which is separate from fresh air, and all those things contribute to that one thing, mold growth, which is a huge problem for health, for the safety of the home, and for the safety of the residents in the home.

I wanted to add to that point because before we started our coaching, mold scared us. We didn’t want to touch it, but we had so many homeowners that were coming to us and saying, “It’s an issue. It’s a problem. How do we fix it?” They encouraged us or pushed us to get that additional training. We had an example of a customer because everybody wants our home to be more efficient. He got someone to spray from his attic, but now his home is more efficient. The AC that he has is now oversized. He started getting mold issues.

We were able to go in there, keep his existing system, and add more fresh intake. A couple of years have gone by. There are no more issues of mold. At first, it was scary to have this type of problem for homeowners, but with that additional training, we became more confident. We can go into homes and provide lasting solutions and something that we can be proud of. A lot of times, I know that it might sound scary to homeowners, but it’s not that scary. It can be fixed.

With that, you also have gotten additional training to look at general air quality inside the home because it’s all connected. You’re able to advise on all of those different levels or a lot of them.

I’m going back also to the point that when you fix these issues in your home, you’re adding life to your unit because of what Lance was talking about. The dust gets into your unit. It can create issues with motors, wires, or fuses going out. Growth and mold can eat away the life of your system. By fixing those solutions, you’re adding more life to your unit because our goal is to get that AC system to last longer than the industry standard of ten years.

Not to mention the quality of life of the residents of the home, depending on their level of sensitivity.

That’s a big thing. If you look at the statistics, cardiovascular diseases, lung diseases, and heart diseases, all these things are on the rise. If you look at the Great Generation, they spent the vast majority of their time outside. Even when they were in their homes, the windows were open. Their homes were made with taller ceilings. They were made to ventilate more naturally. Those people were tough as nails. Imagine how long they would have lived if they had modern-day medicine available to them.

As a culture, technically, we’re not as healthy as we used to be naturally. We have better medicine available to us, but there are a lot of different things that contribute to that. The number one thing is probably the foods that we eat. They’re not good. The EPA may be inclined to agree with me, although they have to stay pretty neutral in these things. Secondly, we spend too much time indoors in not such great environments.

Industries have been pushing toward more energy-efficient homes, “Seal it up.” There have been a lot of unforeseen side effects to the way that homes have been built for the last 40 to 50 years. They’re not particularly encouraging a healthy environment to live in. Going back to what you said, if we can do anything to help people have a more healthy home, that’s what we’re all about. It helps us to get up out of bed and feel excited to go to work.

Your air is supposed to be cleaner inside your home than it is outside. We have gone into homes where the air inside the home has more particulates, carbon dioxide, and volatile organic compounds than outside.

According to the EPA, the air inside of your average house is five times more polluted than in a downtown metropolitan area.

That’s scary. Having a house that’s more efficient and sealing it up isn’t necessarily the problem. It’s what you’re doing with all of that. What would you say?

You want an efficient home, but you want to do it right. I don’t want to bash the industry or the contractors or anything like that. They’re trying to sell homes.

Everyone has their little parts. I do not know all the terms here, so please laugh at me. You have the people that put in the foundation. Everybody comes in and does their little part and all the contractors. They’re not always thinking about the whole and then the long-term effects of being in that home.

Ultimately, they’re trying to sell homes. They have a drawing done by an architect. Usually, it is drawn correctly. You take the contractor. He’s got a budget. He’s got to put that budget on what’s going to sell the home. He’s going to have tall ceilings, which requires better framers. He’s got to have a good foundation. They’re going to put marble countertops probably because that helps sell a home. What gets neglected almost every time is the things you can’t see. It’s the mechanical system almost always.

I used to get annoyed at new construction guys installing systems in homes for new construction, but then I saw what those guys get paid. It’s practically unmanageable. They’re not getting enough money to be profitable. They have to focus solely on volume. They do not have it in their budget to do what the architect said. They can’t do it. If they refuse to, as I do, then the contractor would find somebody else.

That made me feel bitter toward the contractors and those guys, but then I dig into it more. They’re trying to sell homes. They’re trying to build homes that will sell. We have a public that isn’t aware of how contaminated or polluted a home can be because of the way that it was put together. Until people in general start demanding, “I want an efficient as a byproduct but more specifically a healthy home,” and until we get an educated public about that matter, it’s not going to change.

It’s the same concept if you’re building a home. Let’s say you’re building a custom home. You get to make all those choices, “Do I want marble countertops and all those things?” It’s knowing that the systems that are put into the attic and within the walls are even more important because you can change that granite or marble countertop when you get tired of it, but all of those other systems’ pieces are so much more difficult to change and so much more expensive to fix later than to do it right the first time.

In two-story homes, half the duck system is in between the first and second stories.

Do it right the first time, people. Get a smaller home if you need to. Wait on that granite if you need to. There are so many decisions to make. That’s a big part of it. There’s so much more to pay attention to. Going back to when your AC goes out, it’s not necessarily a question of whether or not you need a new AC. It could be what’s going into the unit and what’s coming out of the unit. If you have kids that are getting respiratory infections all the time, it may not necessarily be seasonal allergies. It could be something that you are allowing into your home.

To follow up on that, there is not a little gadget that’s going to make that go away. There’s not something you can throw in your AC unit quickly for a couple of hundred dollars or something that’s going to solve that problem. If your children are suffering or if you’re suffering, a closer and more detailed look needs to be taken.

Now that you’ve been doing this for a while, what has been the hardest decision that you’ve had to make in running AirOne?

There are so many hard decisions you have to make on a daily basis. Once you choose that decision, you have to run with it because there’s no turning back at that point. For me, it was the coaching and investing in our education. We knew we had to. It was a lot of upfront money, but it was not only the money but also the time and being away from our business because we were having to fly out to different states to talk to other AC professionals, ask them questions, and see how they work. That was a rough couple of years for us. That was one of the toughest decisions for me to make and fully commit to.

You had a couple of coaching organizations that weren’t lining up at first. What made you decide to continue to invest in different coaches, knowing that it was such a big outlay?

I had pretty much given up on coaching. I happened to come across this other company that I was very skeptical of at first. I wish I could have Matt and John here, who are some of the guys there, because I gave them a hard time. They said a lot of good things. I was like, “There has to be something that I don’t agree with.” I came across them accidentally.

I’m glad that I did, but I don’t know necessarily if it was a conscious decision. I got bummed out, thinking I could never do business in the way I wanted to. Right around that time was when I met these guys. If I didn’t meet them, I may have given up and said, “I don’t want to be a part of this industry anymore.” They showed up, and I was able to keep going and start genuinely loving what I do again.

How long did you work with them?

We’re still working together. It has been about four years.

That’s fantastic. The first thing I did when I started my business was to hire a coach. At one point, I said, “I can’t afford you. I’ve got to go.” He’s like, “If you can’t afford me, does that mean you need me more?” I’m like, “You’re so right.” It wasn’t a twist of words. It was true. It’s the one thing where I’m like, “I don’t know if I can afford this software, but I’ve got to keep my coaching.”

It takes a lot of humility too.

Honesty.

The biggest thing I’ve learned that’s vital is that if you want to be successful as a business owner, you have to have a healthy dose of humility, which I don’t. I struggle with it. At least I see it, but you have to constantly be willing to say, “I don’t know,” and then roll up your sleeves and try to find the answer.

What other ways does that humility play into your business other than being honest between the two of you as a married partnership that runs the business together with your coach? What other ways does humility show up?

Every way possible.

We’re learning new roles in our marriage and as business partners from the beginning. It was hard to separate those two lives that were joined together on the same path. It was hard to turn it off because when you’re so passionate about what you do, you want to talk about it 24/7. It’s hard to turn that off. That is not healthy either because you have to have those moments where you go on a walk and admire nature rather than worrying, “We need to do this and that. What’s on our to-do list?”

It was a point in our lives where both of us finally had to admit that we could not continue to work 24/7 and have a healthy life and a healthy marriage. We are honest with each other if one of us needs to say, “Let’s put a pin on it. Let’s talk about it later. This is our time together.” We have that moment where we can be honest with each other and say, “This is our time together.” That was a turning point in our relationship when we came to that conclusion. It’s okay to love what you do and work hard but carve out that time for each other.

I’m still working. She has to tell me to put a pin on it a lot. It’s good. I’m still a work in progress there. Humility is every aspect of your business. Many people, myself included, get into this thinking, “It’s finally time for me to be the boss.” That’s the furthest thing from the truth. For one thing, with your employees, if you’re not humble, you’re going to have a high turnover rate.

If you’re not humble, the fact is you’re a bad boss. As management or someone in charge, for one thing, you have to lead by example. You have to be working and doing what you say to do, but also, you have to come to the realization that the more of a “boss” you get, you’re not generating the revenue. It’s the guys and girls out there that are in the field and are booking the calls. They’re generating revenue. You have to make the transition, “I am here to support them. I’m their servant.”

That’s what you are. If you don’t have that mentality and if you have the, “They’re my servants,” mentality, it can quickly generate a toxic environment. Understanding that you are the servant to your employees and that you’re there to support them, help them, and take care of them requires an incredible amount of humility. In dealing with clients and customers, sometimes you have ones that are not particularly agreeable. You have to approach that in a very humble way.

Sometimes you have to be firm but also respectful and humble. In the online review thing, sometimes you get some people on there that put some stuff. I want to spout right back off to them, but I can’t do that as a business owner. We cannot do that. That, to me, has been the most important thing and one of the biggest struggles that I’ve had. Most of us struggle with humility, but that’s what I think about that.

Especially when you’re in that leadership position. Having worked in lots of different businesses, a lot of times, the employees get into a space, “I would do it differently. Why aren’t you doing it that way?” It’s easy to get into that high mindset when you’re not the one that’s paying all of the bills. It’s also easy to think that when you are going to be in that spot of all the decisions are yours that you’re going to make all the right decisions. How do you generally communicate with your employees and help them to understand that you have everyone’s best interest in mind, even if you sometimes make mistakes?

Patiently.

What I like about our team is that we act as a team. It’s more of a family setting. We have breakfast every Thursday morning and talk about anything that needs to be addressed, what our future goals are, what our future plans are, and maybe something that they would want, “I want some more training in this area. Can we have this hour carved out for that?” “Let’s do it.” That’s our time together, where we focus on changes and goal-setting. When everybody feels like they have a voice and they’re heard, then we grow as a team. Changes are a little bit easier to make.

It’s always being patient and listening to them. If you don’t have time to listen, because sometimes that happens, make sure that you go back to them and listen to whatever it was that they had to either complain about or suggest. The interesting thing is sometimes, at first, you’re like, “I’ve thought about this way more than you have. You don’t need to be talking about this to me,” but then I listen to them. A lot of times, it’s like, “That’s a pretty good idea.”

“That’s an interesting perspective.”

We have made so many changes. The positive changes that we have made started like that. Someone is saying something where at first, I’m like, “This is stupid. I don’t think so.” By the end of the conversation, it’s like, “I’m surprised I didn’t think about that.”

They’re in the field all the time with the customers. They see different things. They have a different perspective about it than you do. It’s great to see it that way coming into the conversation. A lot of times, you’re so busy as a business owner or leader that you come to a conversation thinking, “I’m going to hear you,” but then when you ground yourself and say, “I’m showing up to hear you, not just the words that you’re saying,” then you’re more willing to accept their information fully.

It might be the light bulb that changes things. It’s the organization as a whole, but Sheila does a lot of the leg work. Everybody in San Marcos would probably attest to the community engagement that is not just you personally but is AirOne out there. Tell me about what you are doing to be involved in the community and why it’s important to you.

It’s important to me because this is our home. We have so many beautiful resources around us. We want to keep the rivers clean. We want it to continue for future generations. That’s where I made a connection with AirOne because I love the idea of being green. I love the idea of going into homes and saying, “What’s the most green you can be? You don’t even have to change out your AC system. Let’s keep what you originally have and make it work as efficiently and for as long as it possibly can.”

That’s why we won the Green Award for the San Marcos Chamber of Commerce. I didn’t know my role at the beginning. Over the years, I found my place within AirOne by doing that. I grew up with my mom and my dad living by the river in Martindale. Randomly over the weekends and sometimes after work or after school, we would pick up trash in our neighborhood and alongside the road. I found myself, after working at AirOne meeting people in our community who were doing that. I realized that’s my people.

Lance and I have been on a few river and land cleanups. That turned into the Mermaid Society and then becoming a Mermaid ambassador for the Mermaid Society. We are working on our float themed, “Love the rivers that connect us.” It’s going to have a little piece of Wimberley on our float along with some other cities that we serviced. What fuels me to continue is our love for the community and knowing that we are also giving that to our employees. Any employee who would like to volunteer their time will pay them to any nonprofit organization they wish to do.

That’s what I appreciate, too, with Sheila’s involvement because we live in a very divisive world, especially now. A lot of people seem to be against each other and see things one way or the other but when Sheila gets involved, there’s this one group that she has been involved with, The Eyes of the San Marcos River. There’s such a great mix and diversity of people there with all different types of ideologies and backgrounds, but they all care about the river and nature. It has been a unifying experience finding these things that everybody cares about and being able to branch out and get to know a diverse group of people.

This whole area, from Dripping Springs to New Braunfels, has such a beautiful feeling. The people here are so wonderful and warm. We are connected to our natural environment so much more than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. It’s beautiful that you’ve found not just for yourself but with the company that connection and that commitment. You’re meeting all the people out in the community through that and getting back not for the business but your soul.

We finished up the Pie in the Sky event in Kyle where we got to meet a lot of people in the community. We had this silly little game where people could launch penguins into buckets that Lance made for me. They went nuts over it. Seeing their energy gave us energy. It’s fun and silly, but it’s a good little treat on the weekend that you get to break away from your normal schedule and do something like that.

We’re going to be having a float on September 24th, 2022, for the Mermaid Society and celebrating our passion for the river. Coming up also is the Pet Fest in San Marcos. We’re helping out local animal shelters in our area. We do a pumpkin patch where you can take your fur babies and take fall photos with them. It’s little stuff like that where we get to meet the community and hear their story. We make a lot of friendships off of that too.

If you wanted to quantify the money that we’re making off of it, mainly it’s good to be part of the community. What AirOne has allowed us to do is to take more of an active role in the community and get to know our neighbors.

AirOne: AirOne has allowed us to take a more active role in the community and get to know our neighbors.

Going full circle, another thing that you are committed to is education. The original founder of AirOne, after your many applications, went ahead and educated you in the field. Therefore, you’re paying it forward. Tell us a little bit about what that looks like and what it means to you.

There are not a lot of technical schools. There is one in San Marcos.

Williams School of Excellence provides HVAC-type training.

If anybody is interested, it’s a great foot in the door to get started. They’re new. They have been around for about 3 or 4 years. I still consider that new. You can tell I’ve been in town for a long time. Typically, if you want to go to an HVAC school, it’s in North Austin or Central San Antonio. Your typical one is going to be 7 to 8 months. It’s going to cost anywhere from $15,000 to $50,000. You’re going to be driving up 3 or 4 times a week. If you break down how much that costs, it’s a huge expense. There’s the work you’re missing that you could be working on.

For me specifically, I was reliant on getting a job and getting on-the-job training because I did not have the money or the time to do that. That is one thing that we work hard to give back on. A couple of our guys started from scratch with us. They didn’t go to trade school. We have been apprenticing them. One of them is in charge of our installation department. He’s an awesome technician. I’m going to brag about Lucas. He does good work. We’re so proud of him and all of our people.

We do offer apprenticeships. We hired another young eighteen-year-old guy. He’s doing so great. We’re proud of him too. That’s what we are working toward. We would like to expand that, honestly. Eventually, I would like to have a larger facility where I can have a dedicated training room where we can have anyone, specifically like I was, the low-income young people, older people, or whoever to come in, learn, and have that structure. That’s my dream right there.

Being part of the San Marcos Chamber of Commerce has been helpful. I encourage anybody in your community if you’ve thought about joining the Chamber, to please get with someone, whether it’s the Wimberley Chamber or San Marcos Chamber, because the connections that you make within the organization are very helpful. We were able to make a connection through the Teacher Externship program with the San Marcos Chamber of Commerce.

That got us in touch with the school teachers in our district. They have a program every summer where a teacher will come to visit your office for a couple of days out of the summer months and learn your trade and what you do so that they can bring that back to the classrooms. That is an important way that we can get in front of so many students in our area to show them that if you are thinking about a career in the trades, we can pave the way for you to make it a little bit easier.

We’re working with Odom from the San Marcos school district to help us. We’re going to build a training lab for HVAC that way. The school teacher that came to us in 2022 is part of that program. He’s going to help teach the HVAC side to the students. Those are the connections that we made that are very helpful for us to give back to our community.

Thank you for all of your commitment to the students and the community and for doing a fantastic job with the craft that you provide. What advice would you have for someone who is thinking about buying or starting a new business?

Don’t think that your expertise in the field has anything to do with running a business. It doesn’t. If you decide to do that, you’re learning a new trade. That’s running a business. You have to have a background in your craft but understand that. Do whatever it takes to learn the business side. Make sure that your company is profitable and make sure that you know how to read spreadsheets. You don’t have to be a full-on accountant. You have to be able to manage that aspect of it.

I know that some people think, “I’ll hire somebody to do that.” You should hire an expert or an accountant to do it right, but as a business owner, you need to know how to read the reports and the spreadsheets to make the decisions. The more you put it in somebody else’s hands, the more likely you have the possibility of being taken advantage of or not making the right and proper decisions in your business. Thank you.

I would recommend coaching on any level, whether coaching to keep you on track, life coaching, or coaching with other business owners in your trade. Lance was the first one that started the coaching. Looking back at the past, I wish I started a lot sooner.

You shouldn’t stop networking and joining groups. Sheila did the Chamber of Commerce and different types of business groups that might meet weekly or so. That is important. However, it tends to “fail” a lot, or business owners don’t get what they want out of it because they have improper expectations. This is what I thought, and then Sheila corrected me. A lot of people go into networking initially thinking, “What can I get out of it?” They go up to every other business owner there, hand them their cards, and talk about themselves and what they have to offer.

It doesn’t work like that. If you’re joining a networking group, you’re making connections. You need to take an interest in other people and develop friendships and relationships with people instead of going into the networking group and thinking, “What can I get out of it?” If you approach it that way, you will have much more success not right away but long term. That’s why so many people say that networking groups fail. We have a tendency to approach it wrong.

The networking I did years ago is paying off now.

You didn’t see immediate results, but it’s a long game. That’s the thing.

Thank you so much. Is there anything else you want to share about AirOne or the awesome business you run?

We appreciate you giving us the opportunity to talk. Once again, it’s very humbling. We’re a small company. It’s hard to feel justified in having this conversation because we are Sheila, Lance, and Little AirOne. We’re grateful that you gave us the opportunity to have a conversation with you.

You’re welcome. In the first conversation I had with you, I thought you would be a perfect set of guests because of your commitment to your customers, employees, and the community. You are MVP leaders. You are more than worthy of being a guest.

Thank you.

That’s the best compliment.

Thank you for sharing your time with us. Thank you all for reading. If you liked it, tell your friends and follow us on Instagram or LinkedIn. The mission of the show is to dig deep into the lives of true leaders so that others can follow, knowing that the path is not always easy, but the journey is worth it. Enjoy the day and live with passion.

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