Lightbulb Success Story: All Weather Specialists Kevin and Lynetta Jones

Kevin and Lynetta Jones participated in the Lightbulb program. Here’s what Lynetta had to share about their experience!

Our Story

Kevin and I first met when he fixed my air conditioning. At the time Kevin was transitioning to working full time in his business, All Weather Specialists. Kevin started working in HVAC when he was still a teenager, doing service calls and learning the trade from his cousin. As he became more interested in the field, he attended Coyne College to become a certified technician. He worked for a number of other HVAC companies before starting his own business.

I have a background in business administration, and offered to help out on the business side of things. Now the two of us have been working together for 18 years, providing HVAC-R repair, installation, and maintenance service for residential and commercial properties and commercial refrigeration.

Our Lightbulb Moment

We heard about the Lightbulb program after working with Elevate on an energy efficient HVAC project for one of their programs. We had a lot of technical knowledge and experience to specialize in energy efficiency HVAC services, but we needed to build our business capacity for growth. We’re planning to expand our services to offer equipment sales, which will require a warehouse, inventory tracking, and better organization and cash flow planning.

Lightbulb has really helped me look at our business practices and identify where we need to change and grow. The project management curriculum has emphasized the need to prioritize scheduling and organizing the project before we show up to the job site. This is helping me run our business more efficiently, instead of going in after projects and correcting mistakes. Learning the “Profit First” system has shown us how to price our work for profit, no matter the size of project.

Looking Ahead

We’ve learned a lot from the community of other contractors participating in the Lightbulb program. There are a number of small general contractors in the program, and everyone seems to need a reliable HVAC partner so we’ve started discussing their upcoming projects. So much of the work in this field is educating customers on the long-term benefits of energy efficiency. Working with the general contractors we’ve met through Lightbulb who already share that mindset and bring green projects to the table allows us to do what we do best.

Want to learn more?

The Lightbulb Program is implemented in partnership with Business Services Collective. Visit ElevateNP.org/Clean-Energy-Jobs-Accelerator to learn more about our workforce and small business development opportunities.