It’s an imaginary spacecraft designed to provoke, nurture and support a growth mindset. It’s also my new base of operation here at the Go Time Success Group. For now, here’s a little history on the Freedom.
In 1998, author extraordinaire Dan Holohan provided me with my first opportunity to write on an industry website (Prior to that I’d written anonymously at various places within Yahoo Finance). I wrote short articles and posted them on The Wall, Dan’s website at the time.
The Wall allowed my two partners, Steve Merker and Tom Steiger, to build our voice and sea legs. Due to nasty trolls, Dan had to take The Wall offline temporarily toward the end of 1998. Consequently, Steve, Tom, and I launched AREA51HVAC to provide a place for The Wall’s community to meet while Dan took care of business.
AREA51HVAC was a community for industry professionals to gather and exchange knowledge, information, and ideas. Members came from all corners of the HVAC industry. We had CEOs, high-level executives, middle management, technicians, installers, engineers, truck drivers, floor sweepers, media . . . the list was seemingly endless.
It was at this time that I created the imaginary Starship (the name Freedom didn’t come until much later) and used it to represent not only my Road, but to board and house industry professionals as we traveled through space on the way to the edges of business reality as we knew it. Here is how I described her at the time:
She travels at speeds beyond human comprehension. Her size fluctuates according to her occupants. Her structure is metamorphic, ever-changing as it incorporates the new technologies and business ideas of those on board. The Starship is a vehicle built to vaporize boundaries and limitations. She will take us to the very brink of our imaginations. And with but a glimpse of visions to be, she engages the afterburners, blasting us forward, screaming to shatter the barriers of conventional thinking and complacency. How can a ship accomplish such noble tasks you ask? Because her fuel is the collective passion of those on board. The passion to learn, share knowledge, information, and ideas. Through this collaborative effort she reaches destinations impossible for one human being or alien.
The Starship Freedom’s crew are like-minded, like-valued and possess a growth mindset. We are wired to push the boundaries of what is known to explore, discover, process, delineate, and radio back the coordinates of knowledge, wisdom, and ideas to others traveling through space. Sometimes our transmissions are the product of combining elements of what we’re discovering with our own new thoughts and ideas.
