09/04/2026
What I Learned From the AC Guys
Yesterday, the company that manages our HVAC systems was at A.C.E.S. Ranch for the fourth time, trying to figure out why the air-conditioning unit in our master bedroom wasn't working.
At A.C.E.S., we have eight HVAC units.
Managing a property like this is an education all by itself.
When we first moved to the ranch, one of the first things we learned was that the previous owners had not exactly left us with a great reputation in the community. They had developed a reputation for not paying people and for treating service providers poorly.
It took us years to rebuild that reputation.
We wanted the people in our community to understand that the people living at A.C.E.S. Ranch now were different.
That took time.
It also meant that when something broke, we didn't necessarily have a list of trusted people to call.
Not long after we moved in, the old HVAC unit serving our master bedroom died. We needed a replacement, but we hadn't yet figured out who we could trust to manage the many systems on the property.
We were introduced to a man named John, who seemed to be a jack-of-all-trades. As luck would have it, he happened to have a heat pump that would work for the room.
He installed it for us at what seemed like a very reasonable price.
There was just one problem.
The indoor unit was in the attic above one side of the master bedroom, while the outdoor unit was on the opposite side of the house.
So when it came time to run the thermostat wire between the two, the installer chose what appeared to be the shortest route:
**Over the top of the house.**
At the time, we were replacing the roof, so the roofers were already there. They were more comfortable on that roof than most people would ever want to be. In fact, the roof at A.C.E.S. Ranch is something of an adventure in itself. In many places, you can't see the ground from the roof. You see the pasture far below instead.
The wire was run over the roof.
And it worked.
For years.
Until it didn't.
The wire eventually deteriorated from years of exposure to the Texas weather and began shorting out.
So yesterday, two HVAC technicians arrived around 9:30 in the morning to replace it.
They came prepared.
They had ladders.
They had tools.
They had experience.
And they spent hours trying to find a way to run the new wire inside the roof so they wouldn't have to go back over the roof.
They couldn't make it work.
So eventually, they decided to do what had been done before.
They would run the new wire over the roof.
At one point, one of the men climbed onto the roof using a longer ladder we had available. They had placed the ladder farther away from where the wire needed to exit the house because it was a more secure place for the ladder to rest.
That made sense from the ground.
It wasn't as useful once he was on the roof.
He tried to adjust the ladder while standing on the roof, and the situation became increasingly uncomfortable to watch.
It was over 100 degrees outside.
The roof was extremely hot.
He had been working since 9:30 that morning.
His face and neck were bright red.
And honestly, my biggest concern at that point wasn't the air conditioner.
It was whether I was about to watch someone fall off my roof.
He eventually came back down, moved the ladder closer to where he needed it, and tried again.
But then they encountered another problem.
The wire wouldn't cooperate.
It seemed to be catching on something as they tried to get it over the roof. And even after they managed to get it over the top, they couldn't figure out how to get it down the other side and into the outdoor unit.
By this point, they had been working for hours.
They had called another technician for help.
And somewhere around 4:30 in the afternoon, I looked at what they were trying to accomplish and said:
**"What if you follow the drain line from that unit out of the house and then drop the new thermostat line into the rain gutters that circle the house?"**
There was a pause.
And then they tried it.
When the additional technician arrived, the three of them worked their way around the house.
About 90 minutes later, the new line was in place.
At 7:30 that evening, they finally packed up their tools and ladders and left.
The air conditioner was working.
And I couldn't help thinking about the lesson in what had just happened.
The technicians weren't bad at their jobs.
They weren't lazy.
They weren't incompetent.
In fact, they worked incredibly hard all day.
The problem was that they were trying to solve a new problem by following an old path.
And sometimes, **the old path isn't the best path anymore.**
That made me think about Animal Chiropractic 101.
When we first opened A.C.E.S. in 2013, we were teaching in a house in an HOA north of Dallas.
We initially ran our labs much like other animal chiropractic programs did.
And on the surface, it worked.
Students came to lab.
We taught them.
We adjusted animals.
They watched us demonstrate what we were teaching.
But we noticed something that bothered us.
Students weren't necessarily going home and seeing animal patients.
They had learned the information, but many weren't yet confident that they could reproduce the results they had watched us achieve.
And there was another problem.
We were exhausted.
At the end of a day of teaching, we might have personally adjusted 20 dogs or 25 horses.
We were demonstrating our expertise over and over again.
The students were watching.
And watching an expert do something can make it look deceptively easy.
We still hear a version of the old philosophy from animal chiropractors today:
**"You teach this one the basics, and then I'll teach him or her how to adjust when they get certified."**
And honestly, that makes perfect sense when you understand how the old system developed.
The schools taught the fundamentals.
The doctors got certified.
Then they went home and had to figure out how to make animal chiropractic actually work in their practices.
They had to develop their hands.
They had to develop their confidence.
They had to figure out how to apply what they had learned to real patients.
In other words, the education didn't necessarily end with certificationโbut the responsibility for turning that education into clinical competence largely shifted to the individual doctor.
That was the path.
And for many doctors, it worked.
But we began asking a different question.
**What if we didn't make doctors figure it out on their own?**
What if the goal of the program was to help them become competent practitioners before they left us?
Moving to A.C.E.S. Ranch changed our thinking.
We began asking:
**What if the goal of lab isn't for students to watch us become experts?**
What if the goal is for students to **become the experts themselves?**
So we changed the system.
We stopped adjusting the animals that volunteered to come to lab for our students to learn from.
Instead, **the students adjusted the animals.**
That was a significant change.
The student could no longer simply watch us make an adjustment in a few minutes.
They had to learn how to do it.
They had to develop their palpation skills.
They had to learn how to position themselves and the animal.
They had to make decisions.
They had to develop confidence in their own hands.
They had to experience what it felt like to succeedโand to make corrections when they didn't.
We weren't trying to eliminate the importance of the basics.
We were asking what should come **after** the basics.
Our answer was:
**Practice.**
Not someday.
Not after they got home.
Not after they found someone willing to teach them.
During their education.
That is one of the things that makes an A.C.E.S. graduate different.
Our goal is not simply to send a newly certified doctor home with a foundation and the hope that they will figure out the rest.
**We want our graduates to come ready to work.**
And there is another important distinction.
We don't train doctors to get paid for the amount of time they spend adjusting an animal.
**We train them to get the outcome.**
That changes the entire mindset.
The goal isn't to make an adjustment take 30 minutes because that is what you are charging for.
The goal isn't to spend an hour with an animal simply because an hour has been scheduled.
The goal is to know what you are looking for, find it, make the appropriate adjustment, evaluate the response, and accomplish the desired outcome as efficiently as possible.
Because when a doctor becomes more efficient, something remarkable happens.
They can help more animals.
They can see more patients.
They can build a stronger practice.
And they don't have to sacrifice quality to do it.
**Efficiency isn't cutting corners.**
When you truly understand what you are doing, efficiency is often the result of competence.
That is another reason we want our graduates to be ready to work when they leave A.C.E.S.
We aren't just teaching them how to adjust animals.
We are teaching them how to think about the work.
How to recognize what matters.
How to get an outcome.
And how to build a practice around the value they provideโnot simply the number of minutes they spend standing beside an animal.
Our students began becoming more successful in their own practices, sometimes immediately after Lab 1.
Then we started experimenting with other parts of the learning process.
We incorporated brain-game activities between classes and before exams.
Test scores increased.
Testing times decreased.
Again, it wasn't because the students suddenly became different people.
We changed the path by which they were learning.
That is what the AC guys reminded me of yesterday.
Sometimes a system exists simply because **someone did it that way before.**
That doesn't necessarily make it wrong.
The original thermostat wire went over the roof because, at the time, it was probably the most obvious solution.
It worked for years.
But when the wire failed, the answer wasn't necessarily to keep finding increasingly creative ways to reproduce the original installation.
The better question was:
**Is there a better way to get from here to there?**
That is a question we should probably ask ourselves more often.
In business.
In education.
In our practices.
And in life.
We can become so accustomed to the path that we forget to question whether the path is still serving the purpose.
Sometimes the answer is to keep improving the existing system.
Sometimes the answer is to take a completely different route.
And sometimes the person who finds the better route isn't the person standing at the controls.
Yesterday, it was me looking at the problem from a different angle.
And perhaps that is the real lesson.
**Experience matters. Hard work matters. Expertise matters.**
But so does stepping back occasionally and asking:
**"Is there another way to get there?"**
Because sometimes the most important improvement isn't working harder on the old path.
It's realizing there is a better path.
And sometimes, the better path doesn't just get you there.
**It gets you there faster, with less wasted effort, and leaves you better prepared for whatever comes next.**
