Breakout Session Presenters
Alex Weber
Famed American Ninja Warrior
With his contagious positive energy, Alex Weber immediately impacts audiences and ignites record-breaking achievements! Alex is an International Keynote Speaker, Award-Winning Host for NBC, and competitor on American Ninja Warrior. Alex is also the only person ever to Host and Compete on NBC’s American Ninja Warrior. Alex helps Leaders, Individuals, and Organizations be relentless, gain their competitive edge, and unlock new levels of achievement!
Alex connects so well with audiences because of his genuine openness about the challenges, self-doubt, and uncertainty that we all face – and how you can overcome it! As a professional entertainer, US Lacrosse Coach of the Year, and acclaimed Author, Alex is highly sought after for his unique ability to engage, transform, and empower audiences. Alex has positively inspired over 3.5 million people worldwide, and worked with major companies like Xerox, Apple, Fidelity, Amazon, Under Armor, LinkedIn, The Los Angeles Lakers, Stanford Business and many more. Alex is also the only person ever to Host and Compete on NBC’s American Ninja Warrior.
With his riveting storytelling, uplifting humor, and captivating energy, Alex empowers you to be a positive leader, propel past challenges, and accomplish your highest goals in your career, your relationships, and your life!
Jason Walker
Owner, Royalty Heating & Cooling | Founder, HVAC Masters of the Hustle
Jason Walker, AKA “Jay Dub Money Maker”, is a well-known figure in the HVAC industry. He began his career in 2010 as a warehouse shop cleaner and, driven by exceptional work ethic and determination, quickly advanced through the ranks — from duct cleaner and install helper to parts manager and ultimately comfort advisor.
In 2014, during his first calendar year as a comfort advisor — with only 8 months left in the year — Jason produced over $2.2 million in revenue. Since then, he has consistently generated over $3 million annually, reaching as high as $3.8 million with a closing average of 65–70%. Over the past six years, he has sold more than $18,000,000 in residential replacement, recognizing and seizing the massive opportunity the HVAC industry provides.
Now, it is Jason’s MISSION — and he believes everyone has a Spartan within — and it’s his job, his duty, and his obligation to bring that out. This calling has driven him to share his gift with the world. With hundreds and thousands of hours spent fine-tuning his sales process, Jason was ranked 3rd in the nation as a comfort advisor by Success Academy & AirTime 500, earned the Crown Champion Award multiple years in a row, and was featured in Compass Magazine in the article titled “Learning from the BEST!”
Since launching his training program, contractors have seen transformative results — average tickets have increased by 10%, some by as much as 40%, with additional gains of $1,000 to $4,000 per ticket. Through his training, Jason shares what’s possible in this industry with the right mindset, process, and procedures.
While traveling and training, he has visited countless companies and worked with some of the most successful individuals in the HVAC space. He’s experienced opportunities that most HVAC contractors will never have — and now he’s committed to opening those doors for others.
Brad Barron
CEO & Partner, Barron Heating AC Electrical & Plumbing | Founder & Partner, WholeHome™ Alliance
Brad is a third-generation business owner at Barron Heating AC Electrical & Plumbing in Northwest Washington State. Barron is a 50+ year multi-trade company doing approximately $50M of revenue annually with 200 employees across five counties (barronheating.com/). In addition to leading the Barron Team, Brad is also the founder and a partner of WholeHome Alliance, a network of industry-leading service providers dedicated to collaboration, innovation, and real business growth. Contractors from across the United States and Canada come together to share best practices, train their team members, and lean into creative content such as video production to ultimately grow their businesses (wholehomealliance.com/).
Brad is a graduate of the University of Washington (Seattle) with a degree in engineering. Prior to joining the Barron Team, Brad worked as a consulting engineer, eventually earning his Professional Engineering license. After a half-decade of consulting, he spent another five years as a sales engineer and then engineering manager of a four-state territory, including Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska. During his tenure as an engineering sales manager, Brad’s northwest team led the company in specification approvals and sales growth.
In 2017, Brad joined his father John, at Barron Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc. as the Business Development Manager. During his time in this role, he led Barron’s expansion into Electrical, Solar, and Plumbing – after which the company was re-branded Barron Heating AC Electrical & Plumbing. Recognizing the growing chasm of Baby Boomer retirements with few Millennials and Gen-Z-ers entering the trades, Brad spearheaded the development of the Barron Technician School (now WholeHome Academy). This in-house, 15-week intensive HVAC program has graduated three dozen licensed and certified HVAC Technicians and has significantly helped Barron’s growth through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Through his career at Barron, Brad has worked as the Business Development Manager, Director of Operations, Chief Operating Officer, and now Chief Executive Officer & Partner. Barron Heating AC Electrical & Plumbing’s growth has been 100% organic – Barron has never acquired a trades company nor partnered with private equity. To this day, Barron remains debt free with a healthy cash reserve to continue on its multi-trade growth trajectory.
Brad is an adamant believer in his grandparent’s (and Barron founder’s) philosophy of “when you bless others, you in turn are blessed”. He has a passion for sharing best practices and growing leaders – from sales and marketing to operations and finance. There is no need to re-create the wheel – Brad embraces a culture of equipping people with the tools and training to get the job done while advancing their careers and businesses. We don’t need to do it alone!
Dave Marrs
Star of HGTV’s Fixer to Fabulous
Home renovator Dave Marrs is an expert craftsman, builder, general contractor and all-around handyman. He collaborates with his wife, Jenny Marrs, to restore timeworn homes into contemporary living spaces on their HGTV series Fixer to Fabulous. Dave’s knowledge of restoring old homes is unrivaled and his passion for bringing out the charm of historic homes is contagious. He and Jenny are teaming up to compete in season 3 of HGTV’s hit show, Rock the Block.
Stephanie Allen
CEO, AirWorks Solutions | Founder, Fuel | Co-Founder, JustStartAI
Everyone in the trades is being told the same thing: build it to sell. Stephanie Allen built hers to keep.
She started AirWorks Solutions at 25 with her high school sweetheart, and sixteen years later they’re still at it, running a multi-million dollar HVAC and plumbing operation in Ventura County while raising four kids ten and under. She turned down the exit. Now she’s building Fuel, a growth collective for independent trades businesses that want to scale without selling out. Not a franchise. Not a mastermind. A community being built in real time, on equity, strategy, and the belief that independent owners are sitting on more leverage than they realize. She’s not pitching a finished product. She’s linking arms with the owners who want to build it with her.
Stephanie earned her JD/MBA from the University of Alabama on a full ride scholarship, is a licensed California attorney, an ACHR News 40 Under 40 honoree, a co-founder of JustStartAI, and one of the few female CEOs in the trades. She shows up to talk about the real stuff: ownership, AI, and what it actually takes to build a business worth keeping.
Her north star is simple. We’re better together, and we can all win.
Kathryn Howard
Founder, KP Performance Group | Former Owner, Lee’s Air, Plumbing & Heating
Kathryn Howard went from high school dropout to Stanford Graduate School of Business alumna and became a driving force behind a nine-figure home service organization. As Founder of KP Performance Group and Former Owner at Lee’s Air, Plumbing & Heating, Kathryn has built her career helping companies unlock their greatest competitive advantage—their people.
Throughout her career, Kathryn has built and led high-performing teams, launched new markets, including global operations in Armenia, and developed leadership systems that increased revenue, strengthened culture, elevated employee performance, and created opportunities for people to thrive. Her mission is to create a pathway to prosperity for anyone willing to show up and work hard, regardless of your gender, race, immigration status, or even criminal history.
Known for her practical, high-energy approach, Kathryn equips leaders with the tools to build high-performance teams where accountability, trust, and purpose drive extraordinary results. Her message is simple: when you intentionally invest in your people, the profits appear.
Russ Horrocks
Vice President, Flow Odyssey
Russ Horrocks emerged as one of the most successful Comfort Advisors in America in the mid-90s. Russ quickly took to sharing his unique knowledge of buyer psychology with sales forces across the country. He turned his profession into a passion, educating and coaching in-home sales and service advisors to understand the critical skills necessary to achieve results far exceeding personal mindset limitations and corporate expectations.
Most trainers preach about product and process. Russ teaches and coaches his sales and service protégés not only about what to do in the home and how to do it, but more importantly, why. “Why” leads to a purpose, allowing the people his students serve to build a strong connection based on a position of trust, confidence, competence, and credibility. When matched with the creative execution of a process built to work with human nature and how people want to buy, it yields explosive growth.
Having mastered the sales process, in 2011 Russ joined with business development specialist, Drew Cameron, as Vice President of Flow Odyssey to help clients enhance the performance of their entire business, and transcend growing one person or department at a time. Together, they work in the trenches with their clients in every facet of building successful home services businesses.
Clients embrace Russ’s detailed holistic approach to assessing a company’s people, present state, and potential. Drawing a blueprint for success, he collaborates with clients onsite, online, and on the phone to achieve operational excellence with a hands-on strategic approach to growing people and implementing profit-based processes and systems. Clients benefit from Russ’s 20 years of knowledge and national experience, along with his relentless pursuit of building happy, effective, top-performing professionals and developing a culture of success and achievement.
Denise Swafford
Director of Education & Coaching, EGIA
As Director of Education & Coaching at EGIA, Denise Swafford spearheads the strategy for the organization’s education and coaching programs through Contractor University and HVAC Distributor University. She leads EGIA’s internal coaching team and also serves as a featured educator and speaker, presenting workshops, webinars, and keynote sessions for contractors and other industry partners across North America.
Denise has decades of leadership experience in the home services industry, beginning in her family’s HVAC business before helping lead the company through a successful acquisition. She has since held key leadership roles with some of the industry’s largest and most successful organizations. Throughout her career, she has coached thousands of contractors, developed innovative training programs and business systems, and helped home service companies improve operations, grow revenue, and build lasting success.
James Leichter
President & CEO, Aptora
James R. Leichter is the rare blend of master mechanic and serial tech entrepreneur. After turning a wrench straight out of high school, he channeled that frontline know-how into founding Aptora Corporation, creators of the award-winning Total Office Manager® ERP suite and Flat Rate Plus® pricing systems used by thousands of service contractors. Through his MrHVAC.com community and EGIA faculty work, James has delivered practical, no-fluff guidance to contractors in nearly every state, pairing street-smart operations wisdom with sharp financial insight from his role at RA Tax & Accounting.
Onstage, James’s energy is contagious. He’s led management workshops coast-to-coast since 1996, translating complex topics – pricing strategy, field-service automation, tax planning – into clear, profitable moves any shop can apply on Monday morning. As a sought-after consultant and expert witness, he’s coached hundreds of HVAC and plumbing businesses to double-digit growth while protecting margins.
When he’s not architecting software or sharpening a keynote, you’ll find him restoring vintage watches, tinkering with electronics, or riding horses across the Kansas backcountry with his wife and possibly a few curious barn cats in tow – proof that for James, fixing things isn’t just a job, it’s a way of life.
Brigham Dickinson
President & Founder of Power Selling Pros
Brigham Dickinson is president and founder of Power Selling Pros, a leading coaching and training firm dedicated to teaching businesses to wow more customers. Brigham started Power Selling Pros when he saw that call handlers needed assistance consistently converting calls to bookings. As a result, Brigham answered the need by creating the Pattern For Excellence, a sequence of principles that guides call handlers through all stages of a call, from greeting to closure. Since 2009, Power Selling Pros’ growth comes through referrals alone, thanks to the proven call-handling process and their high level of customer satisfaction.
Scott Deming
President, RCI, llc | President, Scott Deming Speaking, Training & Consulting
Scott Deming is a highly accomplished senior executive with more than 30 years of success within a wide variety of industries. He leverages extensive brand development and strategic planning experience to improve an organization’s standing while implementing innovative solutions to support growth. Scott has proven his ability to build and motivate teams while developing unparalleled customer experience, innovation and leadership initiatives with his internationally acclaimed keynote presentations, training sessions and consulting arrangements.
Scott’s current clients include Disney, Apple, Toyota, New Balance Athletic Shoe Inc., McDonald’s of Russia, Hershey Foods, Pfizer, Delta Airlines, Verizon Wireless, General Motors, Farm Credit Bank, AT&T, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Daikin Heating & Cooling.
Scott works closely with clients to identify core requirements and develops solutions with an emphasis on culture transformation, employee motivation and engagement, and corporate goal attainment, drawing on 30+ years of corporate experience. Key indicators of his success are represented by his training and workshop sessions that have been considered so impactful, that The Vision Council issued CXO Certification to all attendees.; his consultancy input to a national manufacturer recognized in supporting the company’s achievement of record sales figures; and assisting a Verizon Wireless subsidiary franchisee with customer service improvements which resulted in an 80% increase in sales.
James Graening
President, Service Business Resources LLC | Faculty Member, EGIA Contractor University
James has been a leader in sales and marketing, a corporate vice president and a sales training facilitator for over thirty-five years. Educated at the University of Akron for HR, Employee Relations and Psychology, James has worked as a salesperson, sales manager, general manager, and corporate VP of sales with a background in Energy Services and Control Solutions. He has served as a trainer and educator for several trade organizations including the ACCA, PHCC, HRAI (Canada), Honeywell, Service Experts, EAI Excellence Alliance and Comfort Systems USA. He has developed a vast amount of curriculum for trades contractors and is a published author. He currently is partnered with Service Business Resources and facilitates training classes on Sales, Marketing, Sales Management and Strategic Business Planning. He offers onsite “private” training and is a “remote coach” for service businesses, as well as, providing sales mentoring in the field. James has been a volunteer for several faith-based organizations, including the Alive Festival, is a worship team musician and serves on the Board of Right to Life Northeast Ohio. He resides in the Medina Ohio area and enjoys his wife, children and grandchildren as well as the beaches of Florida.
Jenny Benbrook
Founder & CEO, Powerhouse Consulting Group
Jenny Benbrook is the founder and CEO of Powerhouse Consulting Group and a leading advisor to home service businesses navigating field service technology. With a background spanning marketing, data, and contractor operations, she brings a practical, contractor-first approach to tech implementation.
Jenny is known for advocating for contractors inside complex software ecosystems, helping owners reduce risk, eliminate waste, and build technology plans that support growth, profitability, and team adoption.
Pam Duffy
Chief Operating Officer, Powerhouse Consulting Group
Pam Duffy, P.E. is the co-founder and COO of Powerhouse Consulting Group, a consulting firm specializing in software platforms like ServiceTitan, that are built for the trades.
Pam has 15 years of experience in the industry. She has a degree in mechanical engineering. Her career has led her in many roles, including product management for major HVAC OEMs, product application support and training, and working as consulting engineer. Her business experience leading multiple product development and launches had her working with every part of the business, including manufacturing, finance, sales, marketing, supply chain, analytics, and executive leadership teams. She is an expert in critical, holistic thinking.
Outside of work, Pam is active in ASHRAE as a Distinguished Lecturer, bringing her knowledge and expertise to members across the globe. Pam is based in Dallas, TX and loves to attend the Texas State Fair every year!
Matthew Bratsis
Vice President, Contractor Services (EGIA)
As Vice President of Contractor Services, Matthew is responsible for all lending and finance operations within EGIA. As the founder and creator of OPTIMUS, Matthew used his 30+ years of experience in the industry, understanding of the contractor process and non-stop creativity to streamline and simplify payment solutions for virtually every contractor. Working directly with lending and affiliate partners, Matthew and his team strive to develop cutting edge payment and promotional offerings for EGIA’s vast contractor base. In addition, Matthew leads EGIA’s business development strategy, as well as the design and implementation of finance training content.
After attending Virginia Commonwealth University, majoring in Psychology, Matthew started his journey in finance and customer experience in 1995. He began at American General Finance, followed by stops at Equity Lending, Greensky and Renovate America.
Corinne Hayes
Customer Success Manager, SkillCat
Corinne Hayes is a licensed journey‑level electrician and strategic Customer Success Manager at SkillCat. With more than two decades in the trades, she has built technician‑forward training programs that help businesses translate education into performance- from reduced callbacks to stronger team alignment. As NexTech Academy’s former electrical curriculum architect, Corinne developed practical, scalable training systems for electrical, plumbing, and HVAC professionals. Today, she partners with growth-minded business leaders on workforce development initiatives that align technician growth with business outcomes, bringing a grounded, technician‑centric, customer service-focused perspective to leadership and workforce strategy in the trades.
Federico Crivelli
Head of Partnerships, Avoca
Federico is an early employee and Head of Partnerships at Avoca. He grew up a competitive skier in the Italian Alps, has a background in data science, and today he spends his days bringing AI to home service contractors via strategic partnerships like EGIA.
Eddie Childs
VP of Growth Marketing, Mediagistic
Eddie Childs brings a wealth of experience to the table as the VP of Growth Marketing at Mediagistic. He’s been with the company for nearly a decade, starting in copywriting and social media before moving into other areas of marketing like demand generation, email, and inbound leads.
Over the years, Eddie has taken on a more consultative role, helping clients shape their digital strategies and improve their marketing performance.