Starting Strong & Finishing Proud: May–June 2025 Workshop Completion

🎤 Opening Acknowledgment
It’s not easy. It—it’s hard. I mean, all of us can attest to that. And that birthday party was—well, thank you, Stephen. I appreciate it.

💬 Building Relationships
It’s—it’s—it’s… it was interesting. What we do here and the way that we build relationships…
My purpose, my goal, is to make you—or at least help you—on your road to success, be it personal as well as professional.

🌞 Morning Affirmations
Every morning we basically would start out with affirmations:
“I control my success.”
You do control your success. You have that power to do this.
And I’m—I’m very proud of all of y’all for being here and for completing.

📹 About the Videos
One of the things that I require—request, require—individuals to do is to record a short video.
I’d like to share those videos one at a time. Once that individual’s video is done, I’ll ask them—whomever it may be—to come up and say a couple of words.
It could be about anything that you want:
How wonderful I am.
How charming I am.
Okay, not—not that.

🌐 Where to Watch
Just so you will know—on our website, HVAC Technical Academy—if you go to HVAC in the News, you’ll see the commencement ceremonies listed there.
This event, the attending videos—all of these will be posted there.
So you can share that. You can do all of that.

🎬 Let’s Get Started
The first video—you’re like, “I want to see that again!” Or, “Make fun of Deontay!” Whatever you want to do.
I’m off.
You close it.

🧑‍🏫 A New Group, A New Dynamic
Every time we have a new class, a new batch of individuals, the dynamics are always different. Always.
Last term, it was quite different than this term—some good, some bad, some just… it is what it is. Different personalities.

🎯 What Made This Group Stand Out
What I like most about this particular program and this group is the almost complete perfect attendance.
The commitment—the level of commitment—that everybody made.
A couple people had to miss a day or two, and that’s fine, but the level of commitment was super, super high.
And so what that tells me is that when an employer calls me and asks about your dependability, I will feel comfortable letting them know how dependable you are.
You don’t miss. You work hard.
And that’s part of it.

🔥 Real-World Impact
Not the vast majority—when he got burnt.
Oh, you’re a boo-boo.
See, there is pain.
And Andrew was even talking about the pain.
Yeah, there is pain when it comes to this.

🎥 Learning Through Video
We do a lot of video.
I also require people to do videos on something they’ve learned, something they’ve experienced.
These videos—as well as just about everything else—are to be shared.
They’re not only on our HVAC Technical Academy website, but also on YouTube.
So, if you have friends and family in Pennsylvania—not that anybody does—but they can see some of your work.

🛣️ Tangents, Travel, and Amish Country
Oh, are you?
We’ve been to Pennsylvania, and we went to the Amish… things like Bird-in-Hand… some of those really weird city kind of villages.
But anyway—I run off on tangents, in case nobody knows that.

🎓 The Instructors Behind the Scenes
So, come on in.
One of the things that we do, like I say, is videos.
Andrew’s been in the business for many years.
Robert is our other primary instructor—the primary instructor.
He’s been in business for, well, 42 or 43 years. A long time.

That’s next door. We went to… we did some fun next door.
And yeah, you’re going to see—we did try to have fun.

💼 Real Mentors, Not Academics
One of the things about Robert is—he’s not, nor is Andrew, an academician.
Meaning, they’ve never taught—except here.
And that’s what I wanted.
That’s what I think makes this program extremely strong:
You’re being mentored by individuals who know the business, who are in the business, who built the business—and are successful in it.

I’m not a technician, and I’ve told you all that before. I leave that up to them.
I’m more on the academic side. So it’s a nice little mesh.

🤝 The Power of Relationships
One of the things we do is develop relationships with everybody—and it’s always a great thing.

🎬 Before the Next Introduction…
Before I introduce this next individual—our instructor—I want to very quickly show a video about what we did.