May–June 2026 Workshop Opening Ceremony

Hello. Hello.

[Laughter]

Okay, let’s begin.

My name is Danny. For those of y’all who don’t know me, who haven’t spoken to me, I’m sorry, but you missed a great, great opportunity to work and to meet a wonderfully charming and handsome fella. But good news is today’s a new day.

HVAC Technical Academy Second Chance University was born because Andrew, myself, Robert, and many other business owners realized that technicians are needed. This is a much-needed industry. And what we have to offer is something that is a lot different, very, very aggressive, very intense, very work-related as opposed to anywhere else.

Our graduates do very well. And we’ve been around for quite a few years helping individuals out. And like I say, you’re going to see some of the… Oh. Hi, Zach. Hi, Zach. No. Just kidding.

So, what we do here, for those of y’all who don’t know, we do a lot of HVAC. We do some personal development. We do a lot of HVAC because we believe that you learn by doing. Literally. And they did.

And some of y’all did extremely well. Some of y’all had to get out of the heat sometimes. And you’ll see some of those things. But I want to always… Well, we always encourage individuals to continue. This is just one step of the road. Just the first step.

Getting through here, you took your EPA yesterday. Hopefully everybody passed and did well. We do the OSHA training Tuesday and Wednesday, 10:00 to 3:00 in case anybody’s confused. So, that way you’re certified, you got your OSHA, you got hands-on, you got your tools. You’re ready. You are ready. And that’s always a positive thing.

In the very beginning, the very first day of class, I always look at everybody and just sort of, “How is this going to end up?” Individuals for the first couple of days are always a little hesitant because they don’t know what they’re doing, and I understand that.

So, I measure people and how they succeed by how they progress. This class progressed in a lot of ways. The first couple of weeks was very difficult. But the last few weeks, I noticed from the third week on, I noticed a lot of progression. And that’s what I look forward to. I want y’all to progress and to feel success in any… all levels possible.

Ultimately, I am not a technician, as anybody would attest. You don’t want me out of your house, but I do take care of a lot of different things here, more of the background, more of the acting inside. [verify]

I do have two very specific, very talented instructors. Robert has been in the business for 45-plus years, even though he doesn’t look a day over… whatever. And Andrew, he’s been around for quite a while as well. Very respected.

They’re on a webcast that has gone international. It is just going huge.

[Laughter]

I think we’ve had at least… we’ve had at least 20… 20 views. So, that’s always a good thing. Whatever that may be.

So, I always enjoy having them come up, and they’re going to do that. They’re going to come up and say a couple of words. And then we’re going to continue, and I’m going to ask each participant to come up after we see a video that they’ve done.

So, Robert.

“Yes, sir.”

Come on up here.

“I’m nervous.”

And this is Robert.

“I like it first.”

Hello, everybody.

It’s really nice to see the family and friends show up for this. It’s really special that we like to see the support mechanism that our students had behind them. I really appreciate you showing up, and like I like to say, we get them there.

Hopefully you guys are ready for the new environment that you have ahead of you because it’s not really like anything you’ve really been used to. So hopefully I got you broken for that.

Really, just congratulations. You made it through six weeks of putting up with Andrew and I and Daniel and Chris, of all people.

So, yeah. Thanks for making it through. Thanks for being here.

And with that…

**Thank you.**

**[Laughter]**

**”Real short speech.”**

**”That’s…”**

Thanks for making it through. This is hard work. Everybody knows that. And if you’re part of the family, part of the friends, you recognize the hard work that was involved. Moms, friends, family, you know that there’s a lot of work. They would come home, and hopefully they were doing their homework. Hopefully. The next person who I definitely want to introduce is Andrew. Andrew is a critical part of this program and Tropical Air of Central Florida. A lot of people don’t know this, but he used to be a male dancer, and that’s how he made his way through. Okay, I’m just kidding about that. He could have been a male dancer. I don’t know.

Pay the bills, K. Bills, K.

I just want to say, this is… it’s… this is tough coming from not understanding or knowing what it takes to shake a hammer. [verify]

As I’ve told most of you, I thought I wanted to be an accountant. I went to school for it, studied it, worked in two different accounting offices. I was accounts payable clerk, accounts payable manager, and somehow I install air conditioning equipment now.

I’ve seen both sides of it. You just saw it for six weeks.

It’s tough. Everybody in here kind of got pushed through it. You made it, which is positive. Now you got more to do, and it’s just going to get tougher.

The progression that a lot of you made… Grayson, you included, Big Doug… from day one until now is… it’s immense.

So I’m extremely proud of you guys.

The sky’s the limit at this point.

Really, now all you got to do is go out there and find a job.

Oh, and pass the EPA test.

I’m 40%. Forty percent.

Good morning, Cordell. Good to see you.

“Who you got there with you?”

“What’s up?”

“Really? What’s going on?”

The neat thing about this is individuals come from so many diverse environments and areas. It’s really pretty awesome how we can bring together different people, different ages, and different backgrounds into a cohesive unit and progress into something positive. And it is positive.

Anytime you finish something, it’s a completion. It is a success.

The individuals in here succeeded. If they didn’t pass the EPA, that’s okay, too. We’re going to retake whatever part they did not complete. That’s okay.

If we fail at something, that doesn’t make us a failure. That just means we can learn from it and become better.

I’m sort of getting you ready for that. No.

So, what we do now is I’d like to see individuals in action. We’re going to see some individuals in action.

We require every individual to do a video. The video is multi-purpose.

“Did you do a different video?”

“It’s a little late to redo it unless you want to come up here and redo it in front of everybody.”

Okay.

For a couple of reasons, it builds confidence. If an individual is looking for a job and they go to a job interview, and if the interviewer looks them up, there’s something positive on social media, on Facebook, and on YouTube because it is on YouTube.

That way they can see something positive… or maybe not so positive. I don’t know.

But we’re going to be doing that. We’re going to look at people.

Let’s see who we have first.

I’ll have to manipulate this for a second, so be patient.