“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”
- R Buckminster Fuller
In October of 2020, after about 15 years of service and 3 weeks after the company I was working for was sold to a private equity firm, I was let go from my position as a Special Projects Manager.
With 25 years of experience in the HVAC/R industry focused on Supermarket/Grocery Refrigeration, a contractor's license, a credit card, a beat up Tahoe, and a determination to do something better, I opened Wayne T Seventy.
It did not take long for some of the customers I was doing work for under the previous company to begin calling me and asking what happened. Those phone calls ended with me as a contractor for those companies.
After a couple of years in business, work began to grow beyond what I could do myself and realized it was time to hire some team members. I didn't take the idea that I was now going to be an employer lightly.
At the companies I worked for, I always held myself to my own high standards, and often went home at the end of the day feeling unappreciated. I got very little thanks for what I did, and the communication was horrible. We barely met together as a team and I always felt the boss was too busy to listen to my ideas, and after a while I quit speaking up. There really was no opportunity for growth, education or to move up, and there was little to no money spent on training to improve our knowledge and skills when it came to new products or systems. We all just slogged away doing the same work day in and day out.
I had done the job change thing before, thinking a new environment or a little more money would help things, but it never did. The extra money or new environment was always great to start, but this time I wanted something more than just a paycheck.
It is now January 1, 2026, and we are well into our 6th year in business.
Don’t get me wrong, the first few years I was just another company that was just hiring people to make another dollar rather than making our company a great place to work. I realized I needed to look within the company, and most of all myself, for the change to become the best Supermarket/Commercial Refrigeration company out there and to create the kind of workplace people working for me could be proud of and genuinely enjoyed working at.
So I decided to do it better.
We, as a company, are growing a skilled and motivated team of technicians who are in it for the long term.
With everything we do, we are focusing on our core values of integrity, honesty and being open to ideas and suggestions, company culture, communication and we are investing in training to continually upskill our staff.
We are challenging our team to be better than the rest, to provide the best service to our clients. We are meeting regularly to discuss jobs and workloads, how we can improve the business, our teams working experience, and customer interactions.
The biggest change has been that we know sharing our success and thanking people for their hard work is vital to have a great team.
In beginning our 6th year, we have recently opened a generator division, and are making plans to expand to electrical as well.
Positive things happen when you provide excellent service to your customers, and treat your employees like family, and not just another source of revenue.
I am looking forward to the next 6 years and beyond.