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 along with myself, to build our voice and sea legs. Due to nasty trolls, Dan had to take The Wall temporarily offline near 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 and many more participated.
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:
In essence, the Starship’s mission was to push the edge of the HVAC industry forward. The Starship was a metaphor to explore, discover, process, delineate and radioback these coordinates of knowledge, wisdom and ideas to others in need. Sometimes these transmissions were the product of combining newfound dissimilar elements with our own thoughts and ideas. This process has always been the background from which I write.
We shut the site down and put the Starship in dry dock in 2004*
With the launch of the Go Time Success Group, I brought the Starship out of dry dock and re-christened her the Starship Freedom. She’s been flying out of the Go Time Success Group since 2020. Those chronicles are here in the archives.
Today, September 29, 2021, with the help of my friends at Online Access, we are relocating the Starship Freedom’s home base to my own personal website. Nothing changes with Go Time. I am still very much involved. The Freedom simply flies from here instead of there.
I am making a slight adjustment. While the Freedom’s mindset / metaphor to explore, discover, process, delineate and radioback these coordinates of knowledge, wisdom and ideas to others in need, continues, there will be a more finite focus on life on board.
It centers upon the growth mindset. Passengers and crew are inspired and encouraged to:
Choose to board the Freedom and you’re choosing a life of service to others and a life of self-development. If you do not have a stated purpose and until you uncover your own, use this default purpose: To Give and To Grow.
As the Starship Freedom is a vehicle to help enhance human development, consider building your company in a similar manner. Your business can exist to enhance human well-being!
Starship Freedom is a mindset to help you discover who you are, to be who you are, to become all that you can be, to uncover your purpose and to use business to enhance human well-being.
Won’t you come fly with us!?
*Tom Steiger brought the AREA51HVAC experience back to life in 2020. It serves today as an RSES chapter in Northeastern Ohio. Steve Merker passed away January 30, 2013. He is presently building an AREA51HVAC community in Heaven.