http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com helping businesses navigate through challenges to reach their goals Wed, 16 May 2012 16:48:51 +0000 en hourly 1 Podcasts cover HVAC management topics from sales and finance to operations. Richard Harshaw no Richard Harshaw lodestar51@cox.net lodestar51@cox.net (Richard Harshaw) Lodestar Consulting Systems HVAC, sales, financial management, distribution, contracting, territory management, planning http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/powerpress/Logo_4_iTunes.jpg http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com LodestarConsultingSystemshttp://feedburner.google.com http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/employees-or-subcontractors/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/employees-or-subcontractors/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 14:35:21 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=1347 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/employees-or-subcontractors/feed/ 0 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/the-amazing-bill-blees/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/the-amazing-bill-blees/#comments Thu, 22 Mar 2012 16:53:21 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=1309 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/the-amazing-bill-blees/feed/ 7 contractor training,financial management,management Bill Blees was the father of modern HVAC business management training. Although largely unknown to most people in the trade today, the previous generation (1950-1980) knew him well. - Bill was an executive for General Motors early in his career, Bill Blees was the father of modern HVAC business management training. Although largely unknown to most people in the trade today, the previous generation (1950-1980) knew him well. Bill was an executive for General Motors early in his career, but ended up working for Carrier as a consultant when he retired from the automobile industry. While in the auto industry, he created programs and systems that literally saved the automobile industry during the Great Depression, and his business savvy was  used at Carrier to teach contractors how to be successful business people. Bill worked his magic long before Michael Gerber’s classic book The E Myth ever hit the presses, but Bill would have agreed wholeheartedly with Gerber that contractors don’t automatically make good business people– they have to be taught those principles to have maximum success. Bill condensed his wisdom down into Nine Points for Success.  Three of these points deal with things a contractor has to HAVE to make money; and six of them discuss what he has to DO with those things to make money. I have prepared a podcast that summarizes Blees’ Nine Points.  You can play it online or download it by clicking the icon at the bottom of this post. (It runs about 12 minutes and is 1.5 MB in size.) You may also purchase a one-hour narrated PowerPoint program on Blees’ nine points for $4.95 (add $5.00 if you want it on a CD-ROM). That program is much larger– 12 MB Zipped.  It unzips to 16 MB and runs as a PowerPoint “pack and go” show, so you don’t need to have PowerPoint installed on your computer to view the program. Click here to order the PowerPoint program.   Note: You may also want to check out my blog on Blees' successor, Stewart Docter, here.   Update, 3/27/2012-- I received the following email from my mentor and personal hero, Bob Coe.  Bob was the Territory Manager who taught me the TM craft, even as Stew Docter was the consultant who taught me the consulting craft.  I have always honored and esteemed Bob as a paragon of professional salesmanship, and in this exchange, I learned more about Bill Blees.  Here is what Bob wrote: "[I] traveled one time out into Missouri.  I got to Macon and looked up an old building on the south side of town that had been a boys military school.  The cornerstone, which is still there, reads....Wilhelm Fredrick Blees.  He was Bill's father and started this boys military school in the late 1800's.  The corner stone reads 1898.  I waded through 1 foot of snow to see this and I have a picture of it somewhere.  Bill's father had remarried and Bill didn't like his new mother-in-law [SIC]  and moved out at the age of 12 to make it on his own. "It was sometime after that that Blees went to work for some company and was doing so well that he got a telegram from Sears and Roebuck that they wanted to interview him.  He wired back....'who are you--I've never heard of you'.  Anyway, he did go to work for them for a few years before moving on to General Motors for greener pastures.  The rest is history as Paul Harvey would say. "I was able to confer with Bill on these things and he said they were all true.  Really adds to the charm of the story I think. "I remember hearing that Carrier gave Bill an office in Syracuse but he only went there a few times a year.  He traveled the country to find out what was going on in the HVAC industry business wise.  When he conferred with Carrier's management after a couple years in the field he told them that the Carrier dealers and contractors, as well as non-Carrier, were the best mechanics, best installers, best sales force, but the worst business people he had seen. "That was the origin of the planning for the dealer development program that started about 1970 and brought on Stew Doctor etc. "Times change and people come and go but the basics of the ways of business and how to succeed will probably never change. Richard Harshaw no 12:18 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/pricing-for-profit-is-now-available/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/pricing-for-profit-is-now-available/#comments Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:06:38 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=1258 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/pricing-for-profit-is-now-available/feed/ 2 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/tax-changes-for-2011/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/tax-changes-for-2011/#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:15:48 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=1248 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/tax-changes-for-2011/feed/ 0 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/state-of-the-onion/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/state-of-the-onion/#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 21:34:54 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=1245 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/state-of-the-onion/feed/ 0 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/my-tribute-to-my-mentor/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/my-tribute-to-my-mentor/#comments Fri, 12 Aug 2011 16:16:08 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=1212 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/my-tribute-to-my-mentor/feed/ 3 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/a-new-future/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/a-new-future/#comments Mon, 21 Mar 2011 22:03:08 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=1018 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/a-new-future/feed/ 2 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/getting-our-ducts-in-a-row/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/getting-our-ducts-in-a-row/#comments Fri, 21 Jan 2011 15:23:52 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=1010 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/getting-our-ducts-in-a-row/feed/ 2 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/is-a-second-curve-emerging/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/is-a-second-curve-emerging/#comments Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:40:53 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=999 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/is-a-second-curve-emerging/feed/ 0 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/getting-what-you-pay-for/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/getting-what-you-pay-for/#comments Wed, 20 Oct 2010 17:55:08 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=934 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/getting-what-you-pay-for/feed/ 2 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/on-being-adaptable/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/on-being-adaptable/#comments Sun, 19 Sep 2010 22:36:45 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=916 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/on-being-adaptable/feed/ 0 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/just-in-case-you-think-youre-normal/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/just-in-case-you-think-youre-normal/#comments Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:33:58 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=669 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/just-in-case-you-think-youre-normal/feed/ 0 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/paying-sales-pros-part-3-of-3/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/paying-sales-pros-part-3-of-3/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:15:12 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=638 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/paying-sales-pros-part-3-of-3/feed/ 0 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/paying-young-sales-professionals-part-2-of-3/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/paying-young-sales-professionals-part-2-of-3/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:20:58 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=613 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/paying-young-sales-professionals-part-2-of-3/feed/ 0 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/paying-rookie-comfort-consultants/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/paying-rookie-comfort-consultants/#comments Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:10:18 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=605 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/paying-rookie-comfort-consultants/feed/ 2 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/got-biz-plan/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/got-biz-plan/#comments Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:32:05 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=593 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/got-biz-plan/feed/ 0 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/the-labor-bugaboo/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/the-labor-bugaboo/#comments Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:02:42 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=496 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/the-labor-bugaboo/feed/ 0 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/family-members-in-a-family-owned-business/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/family-members-in-a-family-owned-business/#comments Tue, 08 Sep 2009 23:21:22 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=522 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/family-members-in-a-family-owned-business/feed/ 0 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/why-ain%e2%80%99t-there-any-profit/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/why-ain%e2%80%99t-there-any-profit/#comments Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:29:40 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=515 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/why-ain%e2%80%99t-there-any-profit/feed/ 0 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/the-midas-touch-turning-your-business-into-gold/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/the-midas-touch-turning-your-business-into-gold/#comments Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:54:12 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=491 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/the-midas-touch-turning-your-business-into-gold/feed/ 0 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/all-things-being-equal-price-wins/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/all-things-being-equal-price-wins/#comments Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:28:31 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=540 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/all-things-being-equal-price-wins/feed/ 2 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/don%e2%80%99t-neglect-that-401-k%e2%80%a6-in-your-business/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/don%e2%80%99t-neglect-that-401-k%e2%80%a6-in-your-business/#comments Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:07:16 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=483 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/don%e2%80%99t-neglect-that-401-k%e2%80%a6-in-your-business/feed/ 0 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/how-much-profit-is-%e2%80%9cenough%e2%80%9d/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/how-much-profit-is-%e2%80%9cenough%e2%80%9d/#comments Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:16:24 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=502 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/how-much-profit-is-%e2%80%9cenough%e2%80%9d/feed/ 2 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/name-your-price/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/name-your-price/#comments Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:16:14 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=391 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/name-your-price/feed/ 2 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/a-new-approach-to-selling/ http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/a-new-approach-to-selling/#comments Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:41:53 +0000 Richard Harshaw http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/?p=380 http://www.lodestarconsultinginc.com/a-new-approach-to-selling/feed/ 10