Becoming Certified Chimney Professionals was an important step for our company growth.
When you venture out to open a company there are a few things that you know about and can predict beforehand and then there are the things that happen that you would never be able to predict. Those things come in the form of customer service handling, anticipating how busy you will actually become, how much of yourself you will end up investing in order to really give it your all and so on. While you can expect to be working a lot there are things that happen that seem to come out of the blue. This is where my wife, Christa, came in.
What really goes into running a company?
As we move into our 16th anniversary in the chimney business I have been taking the time to reflect on what it took for us to get to where we are now, leading the pack as the top Certified Chimney Professionals in Texas. Along with our recent expansion into the Denver, Colorado area it has really gotten me thinking of the times before we had this much expansion. When Christa and I opened our doors in 1996, I was our technician and Christa became everything else. I was on roofs, doing installations, helping customers and driving to appointments all day. Christa was the most important part our company, she was the receptionist, office manager, finance guru and the handler of anything else that would arise in keeping the company functioning and keeping me busy with our clients. All of this was in addition to handling our two small girls at home.
It all comes down to family.
Now 16 years later, we have expanded from one truck, me, to 10 trucks in the field. We are no longer just a chimney sweep and are in fact some of the only Certified Chimney Professionals in the Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Oklahoma and Denver areas. We now have even more family working with us, my Mother, Wanda, running our office and handling customer service and my Step-Father, Rory, who runs our metal fabrication shop where we create our custom chimney caps. Our family has expanded from our two girls when we opened our doors, to now our five beautiful daughters.
Christa was and is the key to our success. We started our business together and grew with each other in the process. She really doesn't get enough credit for this and should be reminded, in fact people always ask to speak to the owner and its a forgotten fact that she is co-founding owner with me.
We have learned that in order to continue the success of our company to treat every client as if they were our own family, each installation, rebuild, chimney cleaning, wildlife removal and any other job that we preform is done to the standard that we would expect on our own homes.
Now, to the next 16 years!
There is nothing that I have enjoyed more than watching our family and company expand, Christa has always been right at the helm with me. I love you Christa.