HOW COVID-19 CHANGED BUSINESS
The pandemic has affected the way many people do business, contractors included. Some have had to make significant changes to operating procedures to survive. BY PETE GRASSO
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oward the end of 2020, I interviewed Dan Foley, owner and president of Foley Mechanical in Lorton, Va. for our 20 Questions column. During the course of the interview, the conversation inevitably steered toward the coronavirus pandemic and I asked him how it had affected his business.
Foley revealed to me that his business was put in further jeopardy when he began to exhibit symptoms of COVID-19.
“We were going pretty strong, and then the brakes hit in March as clients just didn’t want us in the houses,” Foley recalled. “No one did. It was uncertainty.”
“The first week of April, I started feeling funny and I just couldn’t get out of bed,” he said. “I went and got tested and I was positive (for COVID-19).”
It was a sentiment that was echoed by many contractors with whom I spoke with last year. Uncertainty was a common theme. But then, as we continued to talk,
Hospitalized for a week and unable to muster any energy for a few more after that, Foley realized an even bigger setback with his business — as the linchpin of the
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Sometimes, you tend to take things for granted when things are flowing. What this pandemic did was got everyone to hit pause and assess this new environment.
HVACR BUSINESS MARCH 2021
company, Foley’s business came to a halt without him there to lead his team. “I’ve got talented technicians but I’m the one that brings the work in,” Foley said. “That was not a good place to be in because none of my guys were trained to close jobs or sell jobs or bring in work. So, we had no income basically.” Throughout the summer, as Foley recovered and business started to pick up, he implemented changes within the
company to ensure his absence didn’t stunt the company’s growth ever again. His story is a cautionary tale that is all too familiar to contractors: Be sure your company can survive without you. That said, I wondered how the pandemic affected others in the industry, so I reached out to a handful of contractors to find out what their experience has been in the past year and what changes they implemented to survive and thrive in the current global climate. The panel included Mike Graessle, general manager of Hetter Heating & Cooling in Columbus, Ohio; Benson Green, president of Benson’s Heating and Air Conditioning in Tallahassee,
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