A conversation series for HVAC and MEP operators, with the people who built the businesses.
We're Mitchell Carling and Connor Carling. We're motivated, we're ambitious, we've got big plans in the HVAC & MEP sector, and we wanted to learn it from the operators who've spent thirty or forty years in it. So we started sitting down with them, and we publish the conversations here.
What is the Owners Chair podcast?
Each episode is a long-form conversation with an owner or former owner of an HVAC, mechanical, or electrical contracting business. We ask how they built it, what they got wrong, what they'd do differently, and what they think the next generation in the trades is missing. We don't do "10 lessons from a $100M founder." We don't do clips designed to go viral. We sit down for half an hour, we ask real questions, and we let the operator talk. The show is made for the next generation in the trades; service managers, operations leads, young owners, people in their twenties and thirties who want to run something serious one day and would rather learn from operators than from textbooks. The guests are the people who've already built it. Owners and former owners of HVAC and MEP businesses, mostly in the United States, mostly people who started in the field and spent thirty or forty years getting to where they are. We ask them how they did it. They talk. We publish it. If you're early in your career in the sector, this is for you. If you're an owner and you'd consider being a guest, scroll down.
We're Mitchell & Connor
We both work in acquisitions at The Carling Group & ELEV8 Holdings. Both firms invest in the trades, including HVAC and MEP. We're telling you that up front because you'd find it out anyway, and because we'd rather you knew the context than wonder about it. The show isn't a sales pitch for either firm. We don't ask guests to sell their businesses, and we don't use the recordings as prospecting. We started recording these conversations because we were already having them privately to learn the industry, and it seemed worth publishing them. If you want to talk to either of us about our day jobs, that's a separate conversation and we'll point you to the right place. If you just want to listen to operators talk about the work, that's what the feed is for.
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