We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Carrie Palacios. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Carrie below.

Carrie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Almost every entrepreneur we know has considered donating a portion of their sales to an organization or cause – how did you make the decision of whether to donate? We’d love to hear the backstory if you’re open to sharing the details.

Years ago, before I opened my business, my family visited Safe in Austin Rescue Ranch. Safe in Austin is “a sanctuary for children and animals that come from abuse or have special needs.

Our animals provide healing and hope to trauma, at-risk, and/or special needs people, these are the animals who triumph and inspire world-wide.” (taken from their website https://www.safeinaustin.org/).

For those who haven’t been to the ranch, it’s amazing and incredibly inspiring. They have more than 200 animals they have rescued and given a permanent home. These animals have birth defects, have been abused, neglected or been through trauma. They then have therapeutic days for children who have been through these same terrible circumstances and they have the chance to bond with these animals.

I was so inspired by this, that when we opened our business we decided to donate $100 to them for each new system we install.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

TemperaturePro is a cooling and heating company. We primarily are Residential, but do Light Commercial as well.

I have been a Registered Nurse for more than 20 years. I moved to Austin in 2015 for a job promotion. I was in Corporate Management (ironically something I vowed I would never do!). My husband, Raul, was an Industrial Engineer working as an Operations Manager for a high tech factory. We were both burned out from working in the Corporate world and we decided to start a business together. I knew that I wanted our business to be in the service industry because I’m driven to help people. I also knew I needed to start a business that was recession proof. Little did I know in 2019 when we started developing our business that we would be opening our doors in March 2020 on the week when Covid shut the world down! It was a scary time to start a new business, but we were considered essential, so we pushed forward. Could we have been more successful without covid restrictions? Most definitely, however, we made it through!

We are Certified Woman Owned by the WBENC. Our team started as my husband and I and one Service Technician. Today, 3-1/2 years later, we have 3 Service Technicians, an Apprentice, an Office Manager and a Part-Time Customer Service Representative.

My North Star in my business is to give the best possible customer service and to run my business with Integrity. We are not the most expensive, nor are we the cheapest, but our pricing is fair. We treat our employees very well because if they’re happy, our customers will be treated well and happy too.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Research – know what salary and compensation your competitors are offering in your market. Sometimes you have to push your budget a little to recruit quality employees. In the end, that little higher expense is still cheaper than having to recruit again and train a replacement.

Get to know your employees – ask about their families; talk about how their weekend was. We do quarterly team building events. In slow season, we shut the office down for a day and do something for employees only. During busy season, we invite our employees and their guests to do an activity. We also will do events that include the whole family. Our next event is a family event – we’re going to a Texas Stars Hockey game!

Have an open door policy – my employees all know they can come to Raul or I at any time with whatever is on their mind.

Ask for their input. We have monthly staff meetings that are very interactive. The first thing we always do is “tell me something good”. We go around the room and everyone talks about something good going on in their life – it can be personal or it can be a work win. The other thing we do is go around the room and ask everyone to give at least one idea for improvement. From this we have implemented several new processes. These ideas can be to streamline processes, improve the customer experience or to improve the employee experience.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Networking! When we started the business, I had no idea how imperative it was to network to build your brand, to build a following. I really didn’t know how to network. I started by going to Chamber of Commerce events and trying to talk to every person I could and giving out my card to EVERYONE. I quickly learned that this was not the way to do it, that I was being annoying! I studied how to more effectively network and where to network. We have built a great following and are relatively well known in our community, but it is a never ending job (which I absolutely love!)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://temperaturepro.com/round-rock-tx/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/temp.pro.rr/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/temperaturepro.roundrock/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/round-rock/

Image Credits
Larry Ross, Photographer (featured group photo)