Book a Speaking Engagement Today!
Ready to energize your team or event? Brad Barron delivers engaging, real-world presentations packed with actionable insights—drawn from leading a $50M+ multi-trade company—on the topics that matter most to today’s contractors, from culture and leadership to sales strategy and sustainable growth.
Speaking Engagement Options:
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2-DAY WORKSHOP
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Speaker Topics & Descriptions:
Building “The Culture Playbook”: Grow People & Your Company
With five Baby Boomers retiring for every one Millennial or Gen-Z’er entering the trades, recruiting new team members to your organization can be a daunting task. Once you’ve successfully onboarded a new teammate, retaining them and growing them into mission-aligned, high-performing individuals is even more challenging. And the battle doesn’t stop there!
From crafting core values to establishing your vision and mission, from recruiting new employees to growing your people and next generation leaders, building your own culture playbook can help take your business to the next level. The Culture Playbook is a framework to build a strong, values-driven culture that aligns purpose with performance. It is a tool that is used at every step of a team members’ journey: the recruiting phase, onboarding, learning to lead yourself, developing skills to lead others, and eventually leading leaders within an organization.
Deep dive into Barron Heating AC Electrical & Plumbing’s Culture Playbook and learn how to create a culture playbook for your own company. Gain insights into how to deploy the culture playbook within your organization – as you grow your people, your business will in turn grow and thrive!
Topics Include:
What is Your Brand Promise?
- Craft core values that resonate with your team members
- Establish vision and mission statements that align with your co-workers, customers, and the communities you serve
- The Employee Value Proposition: What does it look like to work at your company and how do you improve your teammates’ lives?
- What is your niche and the “why” behind it? – people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it
- Develop a Company Prosperity Model that connects your company with all the stakeholders via the “Four C’s”
What is your People Plan?
- The “Four T’s” of culture growth – you don’t build culture, you grow it
- The Growth Pipeline
- Recruiting “People of Peace”
- Train with the Learning Triangle – Information, Imitation & Innovation
- Deploy with the Development Square – how to effectively move a team member from losing confidence to mastery and beyond
- The Development vs. Delivery Pendulum
- Deploy tools that every teammate can use to lead themselves, lead others, and lead leaders
- The Passion-Proficiency Model – strategies to elevate your employees from distraction, disinterest, and drudgery to desire
- The Time-Management Matrix – how to ensure you and your team members are focusing on the most important things in your business
What is your Outreach Strategy?
- View marketing and outreach through the lens of the Customer for Life Cycle
- How do you improve your customers’ lives?
- What are your philanthropic strategies and initiatives? – and how to align them with your vision and mission
- Team building and growing relational capital within your organization
What are the key components of your Operating Plan?
- Establish key mindsets within your organization
- Develop your own Meeting Manifesto
- Craft aligned nomenclature and vocabulary within your company – everyone needs to speak the same language
- Detail operating roles and expectations from the c-suite down
- Establish clear, transparent leadership functionality and company philosophies
- Develop performance-based compensation structures that align team member goals with company goals
Attendees receive a post-course consultation session with the WholeHome™ Alliance creative content team to begin the development of a unique Culture Playbook that can be deployed within their company.
Leadership Training for the Trades
Are you promoting top performers into leadership roles – only to find they struggle to lead?
Your best field technicians, project managers, and specialists have mastered their craft, but leading a team requires a whole new skill set. Without proper leadership training, their transition can be frustrating for them and costly for your business.
Brad has helped the Barron Team as well as business owners and leadership teams across the HVAC, electrical, and plumbing trades build strong, sustainable leadership cultures. Barron and their WholeHome™ Alliance partners have integrated these strategies into their training manuals, company handbooks, and everyday operations – because they get results.
If you’re ready to turn your top performers into exceptional leaders, this training series will equip you and your team members with leadership tools to thrive at every level of your organization.
Topics Covered:
Lead Yourself – Help your team members clarify their purpose, set priorities, and develop the personal discipline to lead effectively.
- Perspective
- Potential
- Priorities
- Pace
- Time Management
Lead Others – Train new leaders how to delegate, develop their teams, and build strong working relationships.
- Transitioning into a Leader
- Overview of Leading Others
- Delegation
- Developing Others
- Empowering Others
Lead Leaders – As your business scales, equip your leaders with the skills to manage and mentor other leaders.
- Attracting & Building Leaders
- Culture of Innovation
- Leading Change
Attendees get copies of “Leadership Training for the Trades” facilitator and attendee workbooks as well as access to a 13-module leadership training video series that can be deployed within their company.
Foundational Communication Skills for Technicians
Your technicians are highly skilled at their craft. They’ve mastered the technical side of the job – but is that enough to create an exceptional customer experience.
Customers expect technicians to be technically proficient. That’s a given. But what sets top-performing technicians apart isn’t just what they do – it’s how they communicate.
This course is designed to fill the gap that most technician training programs overlook: soft skills and communication.
Provide your service technicians and their managers with the essential skills needed to educate, inform, and guide customers without pressure – so they can feel proud of their work while boosting company success.
Topics Covered:
- How to build trust and connection with customers from the moment they step through the door.
- How to communicate solutions effectively – compelling customers to act without feeling like a salesperson.
- How to create a safe and professional environment where customers feel informed and confident in their decisions.
- How to become a top performer – because every high-earning technician is also a skilled communicator.
Key Takeaways:
- Operational Mindset to Serve Not Sell
- What a Successful Environment Looks Like
- What is Trust, Really?
- What is Effective Communication?
- How to Remove Bias and Opinion
- The Discovery Conversation
- Invitation to Join
- Findings – What is It, What It Does, and the Condition of their Equipment
- Creating Value in Your Services
- Sharing Solutions
- Objections
Attendees get copies of “Foundational Communication Skills for Technicians” facilitator and attendee workbooks as well as access to an 11-module consultative sales training video series that can be deployed within their company.
Other Speaking Topics:
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Building a Culture Playbook that Delivers Results
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Developing Core Values that Create Alignment and Resonate with Your Team
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Creating a Culture of Caring with the "4 C's": Co-Worker, Customer, Community & Company
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Implementing an Entrepreneurial Operating System that Gains Traction
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Why Choose "People Operations" over Human Resources
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Building Your Next Generation Leaders: Leading Yourself, Leading Others and Leading Leaders
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Generational Business Challenges and Solutions
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Growing your Business Organically: No PE and Debt Free
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Building and Launching an In-House Technician School
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Technician Consultative Sales Philosophies and Strategies
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The Pitfalls of Performance Pay for Technicians and How to Avoid Them
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Outside & Inside Sales Compensation Structures that Work
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How to Win the Google Battle with Brand & ToMA Marketing
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Becoming the Leader in Media-Centric Omnichannel Marketing
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Dominate IAQ with Duct Cleaning & Sealing (including Aeroseal)
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How to Expand an Electrical Division into Solar + Battery Back-Up/Generators (and Why it Works in Any Climate!)
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How to Achieve Departmentalized Financials and a P&L Review Cadence that Works
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"Lock it Down!": Why a Secured Warehouse Matters and How to Do It
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Partnering with Your Local Wholesaler
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Running a Faith-Forward Business
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Scale smarter, lead stronger, and grow without going at it alone.
Brad is a third-generation business owner at Barron Heating AC Electrical & Plumbing in Northwest Washington State. Barron is a 50+ year multi-trade company doing approximately $50M of revenue annually with 200 employees across five counties. In addition to leading the Barron Team, Brad is also the founder and a partner of WholeHome™ Alliance, a network of industry-leading service providers dedicated to collaboration, innovation, and real business growth. Contractors from across the United States and Canada come together to share best practices, train their team members, and lean into creative content such as video production to ultimately grow their businesses.
Brad is a graduate of the University of Washinton (Seattle) with a degree in engineering. Prior to joining the Barron Team, Brad worked as a consulting engineer, eventually earning his Professional Engineering license. After a half-decade of consulting, he spent another five years as a sales engineer then engineering manager of a four-state territory, including Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska. During his tenure as an engineering sales manager, Brad's northwest team led the company in specification approvals and sales growth.
In 2017, Brad joined his father John at Barron Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc. as the Business Development Manager. During his time in this role, he led Barron's expansion into Electrical, Solar, and Plumbing - after which the company was re-branded Barron Heating AC Electrical & Plumbing. Recognizing the growing chasm of Baby Boomer retirements with few Millennials and Gen-Z-ers entering the trades, Brad spearheaded the development of the Barron Technician School (now WholeHome™ Academy). This in-house, 15-week intensive HVAC program has graduated three-dozen licensed and certified HVAC Technicians and has significantly helped Barron's growth through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Through his career at Barron, Brad has worked as the Business Development Manager, Director of Operations, Chief Operating Officer, and now Chief Executive Officer & Partner. Barron Heating AC Electrical & Plumbing's growth has been 100% organic - Barron has never acquired a trades company nor partnered with private equity. To this day, Barron remains debt free with a healthy cash reserve to continue on its multi-trade growth trajectory.
Brad is an adamant believer in his grandparent's (and Barron founder's) philosophy of "when you bless others, you in turn are blessed". He has a passion for sharing best practices and growing leaders - from sales and marketing to operations and finance. There is no need to re-create the wheel - Brad embraces a culture of equipping people with the tools and training to get the job done while advancing their careers and businesses. We don't need to do it alone!