Tag: awesome

Putting In The Work: No Matter Where

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

Last week I was on vacation with my wife’s family.  We had the good fortune of going to Lake Norman, NC and renting a house for everyone to stay in.   While vacation was on a lake and we all had a boat load of fun (mainly because we had a pontoon boat for a week).  Work still needed to get done.   This wasn’t work from the Application Engineering position here at EXAIR.  This work was physically more difficult.

This was training for an event I will be doing hopefully within the next year.  I’ve been attending a Tuesday morning workout for the past six months or so with two other men, who are both Marine veterans and I thank them for their service.  This work we put in on Tuesday morning and a few other random times throughout the week is all for the same events.   The events are put on by a company called GORUCK.  (Yes, just like EXAIR, it is all CAPS all the time, one word.)  These events are classified as endurance events and are lead by either an active or retired Special Forces cadre.  There are different versions but they are all heald to the same standard for participants.  Put in the work, rely on your team, and everyone will get through it together.

At most of the events very few people know each other that well.  This makes forming a team within the few hours you are together very difficult.  That is until you are under a time hack when everyone has their weighted ruck on their back, you have a few hundred extra pounds of sand bags to carry and because it is fun to watch the Cadre gives you a casualty that now has to be buddy carried.  The main focus is to get people of all walks of life, all abilities, all physical aptitudes to come together, build into one another, and make sure everyone is at the end getting a patch to wear on their ruck.

This is why, on every Tuesday I try to put in some hard work mixed in with a lot of stairs.   While I was on vacation and could have easily let that weekly training go, I didn’t.  Instead I got out a deck of cards for the number of reps to each exercise, grabbed a 60 lbs and 40 lb sandbag and went to the tallest section of stairs we had close by, the dock stairs.

While going through the exercises, panting and glistening (for those that don’t know that’s the fancy word for seriously sweating), my youngest daughter came down to “help” me workout.  The look on her face was at first confusion, then after a brief talk and explaining I am trying to better myself by doing this, she switched to full on support.

Burpees have never felt so good until you have a 4 year old cheering you on.  Once I was done with all of my reps and had made over 6 trips up and down the steps with the 60 lb. sandbag I carried my sandbags and followed her in to the house for some well deserved breakfast.

This work could have been easily pushed to the side and not completed.  Instead, I embraced it and did it.  I was going to do the work even if anyone wasn’t watching because I want to better myself so that I may better any team that I am part of.

This same level of dedication is put in to everything we do here at EXAIR.  Customer service, production, assembly, product design, order entry, accounting, and marketing all dedicate to ensure that we fill the needs of our customers because we want to become a strong part of their team.   Whether it means digging deeper on testing a product in order to get some data at different operating pressure, or creating a 100% custom product that we have never manufactured before, we dedicate to the customer and ensure that all possibilities are exhausted so that the customer and EXAIR can both succeed.

If you have any questions about how EXAIR can help your team to reduce compressed air consumption, increase plant efficiency, and save energy through compressed air usage, please contact us.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

 

A Good Example of Dedication and Commitment from the First Grade

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

This year, my oldest daughter started First Grade.  My second daughter will be starting preschool two days a week, and the youngest, well she just has no fear and doesn’t see the consequences of her actions at this point in life.   To say the least, the past few weeks have been extremely busy, as I am sure it has been for most of us.

A Great Message For School. (Not On Our Schools)
A Great Message For School.

I went to the parent – teacher introduction night with my beautiful wife and we got to meet the first grade teacher who definitely has her work cut out for her.   The amount of effort and care this teacher has poured into this class is already apparent in the first week of school.   She sent us all her personal cell phone number, sends out updates through a smartphone app, and has even told all parents that if a child in her classroom is involved in an activity outside of school that she will attend one of these events because she wants to see the children in their element and see what makes them happy.  All of these “extra” things the teacher does, she doesn’t get paid for, and is strictly doing out of her love for teaching and the children she teaches.  She legitimately loves her job and wants to see each of these students succeed in life.

There are people who teach that go to their job and give the bare minimum to not get let go and to merely collect a paycheck.   There are also a great number of educators that go above and beyond every day of the school year.  When it comes to teachers, so far my oldest daughter has been extremely blessed.  She had an amazing teacher for both Preschool, Kindergarten, and now even First Grade.   Each of these has also been at 3 different schools where she has thrived and I could not be happier with our school district.  I even mentioned to my wife, who is a former primary teacher, that I do not look forward to the year that one of our three daughters has a teacher that she does not agree with.  (That is going to be an extremely long year.)

Just as I noticed the level of dedication from the teachers I have had the joy of meeting, I have also realized that in order to succeed and thrive, there has to be dedication and going beyond the minimum.  This is what I see everyday when I walk through the doors here at EXAIR.  Whether I am walking through the front offices or the production areas, we by no means have a single team member that gives the minimum.  Every person here cares about whether or not the other succeeds, and we all work together with the same goal, blow our customer’s expectations out of the water.  This is just one reason we continue to release new products, offer the best means to contact us, as well as ship stock products same day, and provide order confirmations and install support for every single order.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer Manager
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

 

Photo Credit: Jdog90 – Flickr – Creative Commons https://flic.kr/p/awAXzv

 

 

EXAIR & Tough Mudder Ohio 2015

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

Several months ago, maybe even last year, a group of EXAIR employees started joking and talking about trying to get a team together to do the Tough Mudder in 2015.  After several months of joking, things got serious and 4 of us signed up to do the event at Mid Ohio Sports Car Course.   You may have seen a few of my blogs that involve Mid Ohio but they normally also involve a motorcycle.    The event was held on Saturday, May 9th, and was my first official “race” at Mid Ohio.   Prior to a few months ago, if you asked if I would ever “run” (I use the term run very loosely here.) a 10 mile race, I would have laughed in your face and said no way.   Let alone a 10 mile race with a whole slew of obstacles. Never underestimate the power of co-worker’s friendly chastising aimed at one’s toughness…

This was after the first wall during the pre race pump up speech / comedy show.
This was after the first wall during the pre race pump up speech / comedy show.

For the team, an Application Engineer (me), our CFO, and two from Shipping & Receiving.  As soon as we hit the first obstacle, which was a 6′ wall you had to clear in order to get to the starting line, our EXAIR mind-set kicked in.   There was no discussions on who would go first, who is going to take what position, or who is going to be the weak link.   It was simply teamwork.   We each helped where we knew our strengths were, anytime we needed a solid ballast, or good step off point, I was the man.   If we needed upper body strength, it was obvious that the handling of heavy freight found in shipping and receiving provided the necessary muscle – most definitely not me.

Needless to say, we made it through the entire course in less than three and a half hours which was absolutely shocking.   Not as shocking as the last obstacle, where we got shocked with 10kV before the finish line (see below).

Electroshock Therapy 2.0 - 10kV wires that will make any man scream.
Electroshock Therapy 2.0 – 10kV wires that will make anyone scream.

The fact of the matter is, we went there as a team, we conquered each obstacle and didn’t only worry about ourselves, but helped many others clear the same obstacles, and each one of us faced and conquered a personal fear.   For me, it was being able to complete a 10 mile run, and a slight fear of heights.  (You can see here that we had to jump out and grab onto a pendulum then swing and hit a bell, after which you would fall 12-15 feet into a pool of 15′ deep water. )

Didn't even come close to that bell, but I did remember to let go of the swing at least.
Didn’t even come close to that bell, but I did remember to let go of the swing at least.

The fact that people from three different departments in EXAIR worked so well together on something only one person on the team had ever done before speaks volumes to the environment and the way we conduct our day-to-day business here.

From the front offices, to the shipping dock, EXAIR is here to help you tackle any obstacle and face any fear you might have (involving your compressed air system that is).

Brian Farno
Application Engineer Manager
TOUGH MUDDER FINISHER
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

 

A Ride Down Memory Lane

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

The past few weeks been very busy, both here at EXAIR and at home.    Last night was the first night in quite some time where I arrived home to a quiet house and which afforded me some time to decompress and process. I had roughly one hour of time before my wife and daughters got home and so I sat down and just stopped thinking about everything.   I turned the TV on and my Home Theater PC was going through all the pictures that we have stored on it as a slide show.

The pictures ranged from family gatherings before we had kids to my first daughter’s birth (wow, there are a lot of pictures of that first kid!), through time and up to the present which finds me with a 4 year old and a 16 month old.  You can even see our two dogs growing older in the pictures from every month.

In no time at all the hour was up and I heard the garage door opening up.  Then got to see the three women that make my life awesome come through the door – and its a great event to have young kids who still celebrate seeing their dad for the first time in a day.

Many of us have such busy lives that I’m sure you can appreciate some down time at home which allows you to refocus. It certainly helped me to bring everything here at EXAIR right back into focus.  EXAIR keeps pushing forward (in case you haven’t noticed) with expanded product lines, new products, new people and new services.  We’ve come a long way since we began in 1983.  Instead of a single product sheet for a catalog we now have a 164 page catalog and every single product line has grown to encompass more and more models.   Our product lines aren’t the only thing that have grown also.  You can see just how much we have grown by the many co-ops, Professor Penurious has enlisted, I mean employed. He’s had so many co-ops he has a slide show of his own.

Coop2coop3coop4coop5

So if you haven’t seen our newest items or are still rocking the timeless Catalog 99 because you like vintage items – give us a call or visit our website at EXAIR.com, a lot has changed but our top notch service remains.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF