I remember the first time I taught Jenny how to ride a bike.
The following year I showed her how to fix a furnace for the first time.
Over the years there have been a lot of firsts, but her taking over the family business is probably the biggest one yet. She is fresh out of college, with a degree and a certification, and has a head full of ideas about how to grow the client base. She isn’t trying to manage the business, she has eyes on expanding. She wants to do this by bringing in more female HVAC techs, and appealing to the female demographic for customers. I told her that about half of our current HVAC clients were female, and she said she knew that, but we were still leaving money on the table. She showed me some research, and estimated that there is a sizable market share of people who never, or only rarely, have HVAC work done because they don’t want strangers in their home. Many of these people are the elderly, or single parents, and they also would feel more comfortable if it were a female HVAC doing the work. Maybe it’s unfair, but some people just don’t want a strange dude lurking in their house, even if he can fix the A/C while he is there. Jenny is smart enough that she doesn’t want to change the HVAC business we have, she just wants to grow it in new directions. If she can grow our HVAC client base by 10% or more, then she’s a genius!