More than 25 years ago, Carter & Sons HVAC looked a lot different than it does today.
There were just three people running the business: a father and his two sons.
They maintained and repaired heating and air-conditioning systems, replaced old units and installed new ones. There were no separate departments or managers, no carefully defined processes. Whatever needed to be done that day, they did it.
“We wore all the hats,” John Carter remembers.
There wasn't a website, either—although, to be fair, in those days most people weren't looking for their heating and air-conditioning repairman on the internet anyway.
They asked somebody they knew.
And that mattered quite a bit to Carter & Sons.
The company's customer base was built almost entirely through referrals. In fact, Carter & Sons wouldn't have its first website until 2015.
Someone called when the heat wasn't working. Someone else needed help on one of those Georgia summer days when a broken air conditioner suddenly feels like a full-fledged emergency. If the experience was a good one, they remembered the name.
And when a neighbor needed help, they passed it along.
It's such a simple thing, really. One person telling another, Call these guys.
But do it enough times, over enough years, and a three-person family business starts to become something else.
Families grow. Neighborhoods change. Technology changes. Smyrna itself certainly doesn't look exactly as it did when Carter & Sons began.
Neither does the company.
Today, there are dedicated departments and managers. Jobs that once fell to whichever of the three people was available now have people specifically responsible for them. And as the company grew, figuring out how to train those people—and give them room to grow, too—became increasingly important.
A significant shift came in 2016, when Carter & Sons partnered with an HVAC business-coaching firm. That relationship helped the company develop more formal educational paths for employees, along with processes and expectations for the work they do.
There have been other markers of growth along the way. Carter & Sons became a Carrier dealer in 2012 and a Carrier Factory Authorized Dealer in 2019, earning Carrier President's Awards in 2021 and 2022.
But one of the more interesting ways the company grew sounds remarkably similar to the way it found its customers in the first place.
Word got around.
Employees began recommending Carter & Sons to other people as a place to work. And that's particularly interesting considering John's very matter-of-fact assessment of the work itself.
“This is a hard job,” he says.
Still, people recommend it to people they know. Today, Carter & Sons has multiple members of the same families working within the company, as well as multiple generations.
And when John talks about the people who do that hard work, it isn't necessarily the biggest accomplishments that come to mind.
Sometimes it's a new technician who has been chasing down a problem and finally tracks it to an obscure low-voltage short.
Sometimes it's an installer whose work earns recognition for a “Perfect Install” during a department meeting.
Or it's a dispatcher reaching advanced certification level in a training program and receiving the certificate that comes with it.
They're the kinds of accomplishments that could easily go unnoticed outside the company. The homeowner probably won't know about the stubborn problem a technician finally solved. Customers aren't sitting in the department meeting when an installer gets recognized, and they won't see the dispatcher receive that training certificate.
But inside the company, those moments matter.
And there's something telling about the examples John chooses. Carter & Sons has received industry recognition, but when he talks about the moments that make the work rewarding, he talks about watching someone learn something, solve something or get better at what they do.
“There is something very fulfilling” about watching those accomplishments, he says. “We show up every day striving to be a bit better than the day before.”
Customers sometimes come to Carter & Sons looking for something slightly different: another opinion.
John says the company regularly hears from homeowners who have already had someone look at their system but aren't quite sure what to make of what they've been told. In those situations, Carter & Sons may be the second—or even third—opinion.
For John, that comes down to trust. The goal is to be transparent about what the technician finds, make sure the homeowner understands the information and let that person decide what makes sense for their home.
Sometimes that means a repair. Sometimes it means maintenance. And sometimes a system really does need to be replaced.
But here's a number that might surprise people.
When Carter & Sons recently looked back through its own service records, it found that 94 percent of the systems its technicians touched resulted in a recommendation for repair or maintenance—not replacement.
It's an internal number, but an interesting one for a company that sometimes hears from homeowners after they've already been told something very different. In those situations, another opinion can offer something just as valuable as another answer: a better understanding of the options.
For a company that has changed considerably since three people were doing everything themselves, some of the things John values most are surprisingly small: a problem solved, a skill learned, a customer who feels comfortable with a decision.
And when asked what he's most grateful for, his answer isn't about how much the company has grown.
“The impact that we are able to have on our community, our team members, and their families,” he says.
Perhaps that's fitting for a business that grew, in large part, because people kept telling other people about it.
Long before there were departments, training programs or awards, there were three people doing everything themselves—and a community willing to pass their name along.
Turns out, Call these guys can carry you a pretty long way.
Sidebar:
EMPLOYEE OF THE YEAR
Ryan Given | Lead Service Technician
For eight years, Ryan Given has brought technical knowledge, leadership and plenty of positive energy to the Carter & Sons team. As Lead Service Technician, he helps train and support fellow technicians while setting a high standard for workmanship and customer care.
Away from work, Ryan is a devoted husband and father—and a talented musician who plays guitar with the TasteBud Band.
Whether he's helping another technician solve a problem or picking up his guitar, Ryan brings dedication, humor and heart to the people around him. Carter & Sons is proud to recognize him as its Employee of the Year.