When I first arrived on the scene at CoolSys we had roughly $244M of revenue, $17M of EBITDA and around 1,400 employees. Today, less than three years later, we have revenues of roughly $430M, EBITDA of $43M and we have almost 2,500 employees — talk about growth!  We added Team Members from RSI, Legacy, CRM, Axiom, Energy Squared, Ron’s, Arjae, ABC and Agape.  That’s nine acquisitions closed so far, and another three pending as I write this.  A new corporate headquarters, a new training center, a new headquarters at Legacy, RSI and let’s not forget – even a new name!

As CoolSys continues to grow, I want to take a few minutes to reflect on what we are doing and paint a picture of what the next five years are going to look like.   

Within the next five years, I project that CoolSys will buy around 30 companies. All of these companies will be organized into our three divisions – Light Commercial (mostly HVAC, like Legacy, Agape), Grocery and Commercial (mostly Refrigeration, like Source, SRC, CRM, Ron’s, ABC, RSI) and Professional Services (Engineering and Energy Optimization, like Axiom and Energy Squared). Revenues will reach $1.2 billion and EBITDA will hit $150M by 2023. We will invest $20M in technology to change the way everyone in the trenches works. Somewhere around the year 2023, it will be time for our current shareholders, ARES Management, to move on, and CoolSys will either stay privately held or become a public company. 

So, what does all this mean for you the employee in the truck, on the jobsite or in the cubicle in one of our 40+ offices? 

It means we need to embrace change so that we can grow. It means that we need to become one unified company that goes to market in a cohesive fashion, so customers know the value of working with the largest service provider in the country. It means new technology will improve the way we work, with one another and with our customers. One thing that won’t change — you will continue to be the key to our success.

In my 35-plus years of working in service companies, I have held every job you can hold, including driving a truck. One indisputable fact I have learned is that you cannot store our services or construction projects in a box. In a company like CoolSys, our product is actually the capabilities of our people. When your product is people, culture is everything.

I have one goal and objective for all employees: Create a place where you can spend your entire career in one place!  In order to do that, as your employer, we need to do four things correctly:

1)         Pay a fair wage (or lose talent)

2)         Offer great healthcare (we all need it)

3)         Offer a strong 401K retirement program (we all get old)

4)         Create opportunity for advancement (so people can keep growing)

There is a lot of work to do – we have only just begun the latest chapter of our journey. If we take care of you, we have an engaged workforce that takes care of customers. Customers give us more stuff to do, and revenue rains from the sky!  

Stay tuned CoolSys team – there is a lot of work to be done. It’s going to be a fun ride and some hard work over the next three-to-five years. Together, we will build a best-in-class culture, be the employer of choice within our industry and become North America’s dominant player.