Clinton Ward and Stephen Young worked together for years in the HVAC industry. With help from the Blue Ridge Crossroads SBDC, the friends and co-workers are now co-owners of an HVAC contracting business.

“We’ve worked together for a lot of years, and it was just finally the right time to start,” Clinton says.

After planning the business together, Clinton launched Appalachian Mechanical in January 2024 with Stephen coming aboard the following May. Now the duo is managing projects in Southwest Virginia with jobs as far as two hours away from their home base in Fancy Gap.

They credit SBDC Business Advisor April Collins with laying the foundation that made their business possible, from helping them set up as an LLC to registering their Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI).

“I really can’t brag on April enough,” Clinton says.” I know the trade, but when it comes to a lot of the paperwork, the business, licensing a lot of that, they’ve helped me out a lot. It’s been the biggest learning curve, actually seeing and understanding how much goes on behind the scenes to have a business and operate it.”

Clinton has worked in HVAC, plumbing and electrical for his entire career, while Stephen is a lifelong tinkerer who entered the industry through building trades programs. And while Clinton’s father and grandfather owned a contracting business — which he credits with planting the entrepreneurship seed in his own mind — launching a company was well outside his area of expertise.

“I feel like if it weren’t for [the SBDC], we’d probably still be scratching our heads figuring out how we were going to do this,” Stephen says. “We would have figured something out, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as smooth.”

Along with the LLC and BOI setups at the start, April also connected Clinton and Stephen with Virginia’s APEX Accelerator program, which facilitates connections and contracts between businesses and government agencies. A year later, Appalachian Mechanical’s services are in high demand.

“I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but we’re both very skilled at what we do,” Clinton says. “We’re really focused very heavily on our quality and making sure we do things right. By being small and keeping our overhead low, we’re able to provide that quality at a more affordable price than a lot of the major companies.”

And while Clinton and Stephen are currently the sole employees, their early success has them planning to expand to a four or five-person operation.

“You have to make money. You have to make a living. But in my mind, being able to help people, your community, friends and neighbors — that stuff is honestly more important than the money,” Clinton says. “I don’t care about being a big millionaire running a massive empire. As long as I’ve got enough to pay the bills and go buy a cheeseburger once in a while, I’m just fat and happy.”