Welcome And Guest Background

Amy Dardis 0:10

This is the Building a Clear Authentic Brand Podcast, and I'm your host, Amy Dardis. And today I am so excited to have Chuck Mobley on the show. Chuck is the owner of Polar Bear Air Conditioning in Georgetown, Grand Cayman Islands. He grew up in a tiny town of Pine Forest, Texas, which had about 250 people. And when he was 23 years old, he moved to the Grand Cayman Islands and ended up starting his business from nothing with his wife back in 1988. And over the course of time, they have grew it into a successful business. They have almost 45 employees, and they are closing in on 4,000 five-star reviews over the their divisions in their businesses. He's also the author of Leap Before You Look, But God, which just released in March of 2026. So, Chuck, thank you so much for being on the show today.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

Thank you, Amy, for having me. It's a pleasure.

How A Texas Tech Lands In Cayman

Amy Dardis 1:17

So you are from Texas, but you ended up moving to the Grand Cayman Islands. How on earth did that happen?

SPEAKER_02 1:27

By the grace of God, I can only say I had never even heard of the the Cayman Islands. And even after I got here, I couldn't pronounce it properly and couldn't spell it. But just by the grace of God, I was in air conditioning and still still am. And I was things were really slow because we have a shoulder season in Texas where it's it's not warm enough for people to use their air conditioning and it's not cold enough to use their heating. So we called that a shoulder season. So we were we were uh very low on work, and so in my spare time I would go to a little pallet yard where they re refurbished on these wooden pallets that the forkli forklifts lift up. And I met a gentleman there, and he looked a little foreign to me. I mean, this is in southwest Texas, and he talked funny. And so I asked him, I said, Paul, where are you from? And he said, I'm from the Cayman Islands. And I kind of squinted at him like I never heard of it. And I said, Where is that? And he explained to me there was a little tiny dot in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. And uh he said, Wow, he says, You're an air conditioning technician, you could get a job easily there. And that stuck in my mind. And back in the day, we didn't have uh, I'm aging myself now, but we didn't have the internet. And so, but you could you could call the area code of any place and 555-1212, and it was like dial in 411, which a lot of our little, you know, your listeners probably don't know about that either. But um, I got the name of an air conditioning company and asked if they were looking for technicians, and he says, yeah. And I sent in my resume by mail, not email. And like a month later, I got an invitation to come out and I interviewed for the job. I got the job, and in 1984, I I moved to Cayman with a hundred US dollars in my pocket, which is nothing here. And by the time I landed, it turned into 80 because the the currency is the Cayman dollar is actually stronger than the US dollar. So that's how I ended up. But I think really by by the by the grace of God, I I think he had it predestined and planned that I would that I would come to the Cayman Islands, an island I had never heard of and couldn't pronounce.

Amy Dardis 3:48

So did you have a a Texan accent, like at some point in your life? Because you don't anymore.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

No, I didn't. And I'm not sure why, but even as a young, I moved to Texas when when I was six and came from Los Angeles, and I recall my cousin looking at us when we first met our southern cousins, and he just like I said, mimicked a little while ago, he says, Y'all talk funny. And I thought, I'm never gonna talk like that. Even as a little kid, I think the accent now is charming. I love it. I have family visiting this week, and I notice how country they sound and and how intriguing it is. So I love the accent. I just never took it upon, I mean, I made a conscious effort to have like a a nondistinct, maybe a mid Midwestern accent. So, and I and I started mimicking people in Cayman because we Caymanians talk a lot differently. We have our slang, we have it's not really a patois like the Jamaicans, but that you can I I've I started mimicking them and then I started picking up in my normal conversation words that that that we say.

Amy Dardis 5:01

Yeah, because it just it grows on you over time.

Getting Fired And Starting From Zero

Amy Dardis 5:06

So how did you end up starting your own business then?

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Do you have to ask that, Amy?

Amy Dardis 5:12

I do.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

You want a lie or you want the truth? I want the truth.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

I got five I was hired from the job that I got hired from Texas to do. Uh-huh. I was really coming here for five months in in 1984. And and now it's 2026, and it'll be in another three weeks, it'll be four uh 42 years that I've been here. But the original company I signed on with to come to work in K Man, I got fired from that job. And what happened was they they had promised me a company vehicle when I when I came. And of course, an air conditioning company, you need a service vehicle, right? And when I didn't have a vehicle, I needed to, I needed transportation just to get to work. And so I bought a little uh used junky car, the cheapest thing I could find. And so when they saw I had a car, they just started asking me to use that to run service calls. And I thought it was temporary. And and they would give me uh, I think it was $25 a week to put gas in the car, which wasn't even covering my gas. And so after a couple of years, they started getting all the technicians to use their cars. So we formed a little group and we we asked the gentleman that owned the company if he would increase our allowance or better yet, just buy some vehicles. I mean, you have a service company, so you need service vans or trucks. I had a little old broken down sports car, and we gave him seven or eight months to get the vehicles, and I remember it was it was New Year's, the weekend after, the week after New Year's in 1988, and we went into him and we said, you know, what did you decide? This is like eight months. And he said, Well, I decided just to leave things like like they are. You guys will keep driving your cars, we'll give you your gas allowance. And I just spoke up and I said, Well, I can't speak for the rest of them. I said, But my car's gonna stay in the parking lot. I said, I can't afford, you know, to subsidize your company. And the others agreed. There were there were four others, and he says, Well, I guess I don't have any technicians, you're all fired. And so it was the first time in my I had just gotten married six, seven months earlier. And um, I'm thinking, how, you know, I stood in front of 400 people and promised to protect you and provide for you, and all my wedding vows came crashing into my head, and now I don't even have a job. So we went to our little small apartment, we started, you know, discussing what are we gonna do? Because I Amy, I never had any inclination to have my own business. I would love to say that, you know, from a young kid, I I wanted to be this business person and I had this dream, but I I really didn't. And so about 20 minutes, we're sitting there drinking coffee, we we weren't enjoying, the phone rang. And it was a condominium complex. And they said, Chuck, what's going on? This is my home phone. And I said, What do you mean? And they said, Well, we called the company and they said they don't have any technicians. And I said, Well, what's the problem? And she says, Well, we have two air conditioners that are that are out. And I thought, I looked across from me and there's four K Manions sitting there, unemployed. I said, Oh, I could take care of that. And I said, give me about 20 minutes. I couldn't work because I was on his work permit. I was still an expat and I needed a permit. So I sent two of the guys out, they fixed it, and then, you know, a couple hours later, somebody else called, and that's how our business started.

Amy Dardis 8:40

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 8:41

I ended up buying out the partners because we were only making, I mean, we we we were making very little in the beginning, like $50 a week that we could pay ourselves. And because my wife was working, I could afford it. The rest of the guys couldn't afford it. So they within a year they had all backed out, and um, we had bought out their shares. And um then like a year later, I found sitting there, I'm the secretary, I'm the technician, I'm the designer, I'm the parts order, I'm payroll, I'm HR. So and then from from then the company just started to to grow by leaps and bounds. I think by year 10 we probably had 20 employees, and now we have 45, and our employees come from all over the world. We have like 14 different nationalities represented, so it's very fun. It's a great, it's a great atmosphere to work in. But and and that that again, I didn't know the difference between, you know, a fitted sheet and a spreadsheet. I I knew nothing about business, but I did know how to give really good service and it paid off, you know. And so, but I I think it was a forgiving economy. And I think there again, God had a plan where his vision for me was greater than anything that I could could have ever could have ever envisioned for myself. I never imagined myself on a tropical island or owning my own business or with, you know, a beautiful island queen for a wife. Just by the grace of God. God has been so good to me.

Amy Dardis 10:10

You know? When when you were growing up, were you one of those people who had a vision or did you have just no vision? You were just like, I have no idea what's gonna happen with my life.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

No, I was a kid that my my life was just having fun. And if it was at somebody else's expense, I was even that made it even funner. So I was the kid that was the no account. I was called no account by countless people, um, which just means as a southern way of saying, that boy ain't gonna amount to nothing. And my only dream was to play Major League Baseball. And uh, okay when my dreams and the major league teams, you know, dreams didn't align, then it was it was strike three, you're out. So that was a a pretty big blow to me because I had I got to a certain level and I felt like I could make it. And I was crushed when I when I when reality finally struck me that you know you're competing against guys that have you might be better than them now, but they have a lot more raw potential. And so yeah, so no, I didn't have my my

Faith Mischief And Meeting His Wife

SPEAKER_02 11:15

only dream was to become a major league baseball player. I had no plan B whatsoever.

Amy Dardis 11:20

None. So growing up, were were you a Christian?

SPEAKER_02 11:25

I was. I I gave my my life to Jesus at seven years old, right, right after I burnt the entire forest down. So when we when we moved to Pine Forest, I I was just turning, I think three days after I turned seven, it was in July of probably 1968, and um I was back in the back of our house playing forest range or something, and I ended up burning the entire acres and acres and acres of forest down. And I went and hid under my aunt's porch who we were staying with, and my they knew automatically, because I had a reputation even by seven years old, that it was me. And I got I got the beaten of my life. So what was the original question? How did I get into that?

Amy Dardis 12:10

Was it was you I had said, Were you a Christian? And you said you gave your life, yeah, your life to Christ.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

We we went to we went to an assembly of God church, and the this is after I burned the forest down, and I was constantly in trouble. And the the minister gave us a Sunday night. I was seven years old, and he gave this impassioned, fiery sermon about that we need Jesus. So I went up to the front and I stood at the front and then I had to go to the bathroom, had to pee so bad. And I'm there squirming and trying to hold it. I didn't know, I mean, this is the honesty of a kid. I didn't know if I left to go to the bathroom, if I would miss having Jesus in my heart. So I stayed and I had I peed my pants, I had pee in my pants and Jesus in my heart. And that was the first time that I'd gone up front. And then I got baptized later. Besides the P baptism, I got baptized, a real baptism. And but I took the scenic route, you know. I was very close to the Lord, but then I would get very far away, I would drift. And my teen years, I I was it was really different in my case because I was a Christian, but I was very mischievous. I I would get into just pranks and practical jokes and like taking the tires off a teacher's car or something and hiding them, and just always doing pranks. When my sister got baptized, she was kind of heavy, and from the back of the church I yelled, tidal wave, and uh so things like that. And when I went to the Cayman Islands, Amy, I thought, okay, that reputation, nobody knows me in Cayman. And I did not know one soul, and I'm gonna sow my wild oats. And I ended up homeless because I ran $100, it doesn't go very far, especially when it turns to 80. For the first week, I slept on the beach, and then like six weeks later, I met the most beautiful woman in the world. And I met her, she was you wanna hear this story?

Amy Dardis 14:13

Yes. Tell me how you met her.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

So we have a a festival in Cayman called Pirates Week. And because apparently we had a lot of pirate activity back in the 1800s, 17, 1800s, and so they they have this uh parade, and it's called the Pirates Week Parade. And in this parade, they have these big elaborate floats and steel pan drums and bands and all kinds of things. And they had a Miss Hawaiian Tropic float, the Suntan lotion. So here's this float full of Hawaiian Tropic girls in bikinis that are all part of the contest. And I see this girl kind of in the middle. She's wearing, she's not wearing a bathing suit, she has shorts and a blouse on, a puffy pink blouse. And I looked up and this float is going across. And I thought, that is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life. And I thought, Chuck, you need to meet her. And then I don't know if you've ever argued with yourself, but then this other boy says, You? She's way too good for you. And I'm thinking, yeah, but she doesn't know that. And then you're gonna make a fool out of yourself in front of everybody. And well, what do you have to lose? Well, you might get thrown in jail. Who knows? And I just said, you know what? I'm gonna go meet her. I ran behind the float, I jumped on it, I introduced myself, and uh two and a half years later we were we were married.

Amy Dardis 15:32

So you just jumped on the float. Clearly, there's a little bit of an argument there, but still, like I mean, that's a bold move.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

It was especially with uh somebody that probably should have just slapped me and says, get out of here, you know, or I could have gotten arrested. But it worked out. And and that's been the story of my life. I I I leap before I look, and I worry about the landing later on. And for most of the most of my life it's worked out really well. None better than that leap.

Amy Dardis 16:01

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:02

But it it wasn't it wasn't easy. So how do I mean uh and that means that God intervened, God showed up, God changed the circumstances or or something like that. Yeah.

Amy Dardis 16:17

Uh-huh. So there so when you go to to leap, right? When you go to jump into something, whether it's meeting a woman or moving to the Grand Cayman or starting a business, like there's there's not a lot of pre-analytical behavior going on. I mean, is there even a part of you that's afraid or like, oh, maybe I shouldn't do this? Or is does that cross your mind?

SPEAKER_02 16:44

I think there's a benefit in being young and stupid because you don't know that there's consequences. You don't know that you shouldn't do certain things. And so I was just young and stupid and naive, and I just did things and they they they tended to work out more often than not. I mean, the first time I went to Europe, I went with a Euro pass, a little bit of money in my pocket. I flew to Frankfurt, Germany with a train pass for two weeks. And I just walked across I got my luggage, I walked out of the airport, walked across to the train station, and I it got on the first train I saw. I had no idea where it was going. I just said, wherever it's going, I've never been there. I couldn't decide where I wanted to go, so I ended up in in Basel, Switzerland. And then I spent all my money outside of Basel's skiing, and so I was on my own for like a week with no money again in Europe. So I mean, so to answer your question, I eve even now, like if I if I decide to do something, if I think of something and I say we should do that one day, and then I think, why one day? Let's do it now, and then I'll go book it before I change my mind. So we're we're very and my wife has caught on to this and we're very spontaneous. I mean we've taken trips just on a couple of hours' notice.

unknown 18:05

Yeah.

Amy Dardis 18:06

I mean taking pictures.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

I go to Mongolia, say, hey, let's you know, and we go there and then we figure it out on on the way. Or sometimes we never figure it out.

Leaping Close Calls And God’s Grace

Amy Dardis 18:15

Have have you ever found yourself like in a season or in an experience where you were just like, I honestly don't know. Like, oops, what did I do? Now rock in a hard place. How is this gonna work out?

SPEAKER_02 18:33

Yeah, that's happened a few times. I'm also a natural show-off. So I'm so I'm the uh I I crave attention. I like people crave salt, you know, you could never get enough. But I I was the I was the eighth of seven children. So, and my dad was a truck driver. So my dad was gone a lot. So we had there's my mom was home, there's one lap, and there's eight children. So you know you don't have to be a genius to figure out how that division works. And my oldest brother is a literal rocket scientist. He builds things that launch into space. My my second brother, the second oldest brother, is he was a Disney actor. He he starred in over 250 different movies and TV shows growing up. And then he was a green beret, a real live green. Some, you know, some actors pretend to be soldiers. My brother became one. And then I made the joke, and then there was me, you know? So I had really nothing to offer the world, so I thought creativity and just getting attention. So I've done so one of the times I jumped into a river in the Dominican Republic, not knowing it's actually an aqueduct. So this is a thing that shoots water into an irrigation canal, which actually is a river, and it's very, very high speed. It's almost like a water park ride, you know, but it it it's supposed to feed crops. This one had diverted and it went into a river. And so I decided it would be fun to slide down this thing because the water carries you. And then when you get to the end, I knew there was a whirlpool because it goes down about 15 feet, and when the water hits, it forms this big eddy or a whirlpool. And my thought was when I get to the end, I just jump out, jump over the whirlpool, and I swim to the shore. Well, I I jumped right into the middle of the whirlpool. And so that was maybe the closest time that I came to dying. I just couldn't get out. And I'm a good swimmer. And I'm just swimming as hard as I can, I'm not going anywhere, and then it would suck me under. And that lasted, I'm I'm gonna say time probably went a lot slower than it was, but it's probably five, six, seven minutes that I was in there not able to move out of this eddy. I look up at some point, and people are just standing on the bank. My wife, I'm looking for somebody to hold a stick out or throw a life preserver. She's there with with with a camera, she's taking my picture. And the picture's in the book. I have proof of it in the book. Somehow it the the the current changed and I was almost spat out, and I swam to shore and I just lay there heaving, thanking God. But that was one thing where I thought, wow, Chuck, what have is attention really this important that you're willing to die for it? I've done a solo, a static line skydive where the parachute didn't open all the way, and it only opened up about halfway. So I'm looking up and it's like a broken umbrella, you know, in a windstorm. And I was able to twist my legs, and the guy was hollering at me in a radio set. Twist your legs, twist your legs. And so I didn't, and then it opened and everything ended up fine. But I there's probably about 10 different circumstances similar to that. Some of Yeah, I have no doubt that that God was God's grace helped me to survive those. There's there's one really recently that I really don't want to go into because the Person that is involved didn't survive it. So maybe one. I didn't even feel comfortable putting it in my book because it was a plane crash that I wasn't on the plane, but by all intents and purposes. I was on the first leg, but just by I can't even say it's by divine intervention. Because the guy who was killed in the crash, he was a Christian missionary taking relief supplies to Jamaica. And so it's just I I it's something that I can't understand. Why, why I don't understand how God works, but I have learned not to question him either. His ways are much higher than, you know, the other way that I can think.

Amy Dardis 22:37

Do you feel like in those situations where you feel like in for all intents of purpose, you it easily could have gone another way? That that is God's grace and provision and protection over your life in the sense that he's like, Chuck, your life belongs to me. So I need you to be willing to do whatever I ask of you.

SPEAKER_02 22:59

Right. It's almost like, you know, that this is not the last chapter. I'm still writing your story, Chuck. So don't try to kill yourself. Have a finished with your story. I have work for you to do. And I I think each of us, Amy, have we have a purpose that God has us here for.

SPEAKER_03 23:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

And I've never been able to understand that God can use my personality, my pranks, my trying to be funny, my adventurousness, uh, my sense of adventure for his glory. But the the book itself, I've had a lot of people write in and say, Well, your book touched me. I was crying one page and the next page I'm crying laughing. I decided to make up with my sister because I read your chapter about your siblings. And so yeah, he's not finished writing my my story yet, which is which is why I'm still here.

Amy Dardis 23:49

Mm-hmm. What do you feel like is maybe one of the bigger lessons or something that kind of God has taught you over the years?

SPEAKER_02 24:00

Not take myself so seriously. One one thing that he has to remind me of is as a human, and I'm sure that all of your listeners will relate to this, is as important as I think I am to this world, everybody on earth feels the same exact way. And and so my my needs are no more important than this person walking down the street that I that I see later on. No matter the accolades or however many books we write or what title we have, the most important person in everybody's life is themselves. And I I've made the mistake of going around thinking that, you know, I'm the most important person. When, yeah, to me, maybe to my even in our families, you know, we're we're the most important people. And and God has to constantly remind me of that, is that I don't love you any more than I love these people.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

And these are my children too, so so treat them, you know, treat them well.

Leading With Integrity And Service

Amy Dardis 25:03

Yeah. You have a a bold, fearless, like, you know, mischievous personality. Like, how did that play into how you ran your business?

SPEAKER_02 25:15

It uh I think it actually helps because I didn't take things so serious. You know, you have a big loss a month where you lose. Okay, well that's an opportunity to that we can, you know, it's gonna be easier to ramp back up than to get sales back up. Uh when I would handle you know, sometimes kids that are creative and get in trouble. I say creative, but they can get in trouble in creative ways. And so I was able to use that creativity in my business. So we we had a couple of guys that would come in late all the time. And you can tell it's not fair to everyone else, you come in when you want, you can fire them, which doesn't do us any good, or it doesn't do them any good. So I just bought a toilet. I put it in front of, we have a meeting every morning, so I had this toilet sitting there. And anybody that came in late, they had to sit on the toilet in in front of everyone. And then I also had a hula hoop, and they would have to hula hoop in front of everybody if they came in late. And you know, it it actually uh it actually worked. They stopped after sitting on the toilet a couple of times, they got tired of it and they start coming in on time. So we can we can use our mischievousness to to our advantage. It's helped in marketing and doing things that people say, oh, you shouldn't do that. And we do it and it works out somehow.

Amy Dardis 26:40

Yeah. I think at people's core, we all crave authenticity and connection. I mean, and in business, we almost kind of trick ourselves into being like, oh, well, there's a right way to do it, you know? And then it's like we kind of we lose sight of like that very human thing that is why people are like, yeah, I want to hire this plumbing or this air conditioning outfit because they're creative and fun and they have a personality.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

Or if they make a mistake, they're they're not so, you know, above that we we admit women make mistakes. I mean, it we're not every service call doesn't go right. And so that there's a one thing that happened. It could have been one of the worst things to happen. But one day we we got a call. I mean, we're all about customer service. You treat the customer, we we want the public to respect us. I don't want to see your our our car outside of our business vehicle, outside of a bar, even if you're off hours. If you're in our uniform, I want you to behave, be a gentleman, be a lady, because you're representing our company. So one day we got a call about eight o'clock one morning, and the customer said, or the somebody from the public, they said, I found a pull of bear ladder in the middle of the street on Beach Bay Road. Which tells me that somebody was going really fast and the ladder flipped out, and then they didn't even bother to, you know, they they didn't notice, and it just looked bad. And so I got the we we hadn't had our meeting yet, so I huddled everybody up and I said, Look, this is what happened. Who lost their ladder? Nobody said anything. I said, guys, I said, we're not going anywhere until I find out who lost their ladder on Beach Bay Road. Nobody said anything. They all went, I said, go check your trucks. Everybody came back. I have my ladder, I have my ladder. We checked the computer to see who was working on Beach Bay Road, nobody. And I went to get a cup of coffee, and as I was pouring my coffee, I thought, goodness, I have I had borrowed a company truck with a ladder in the back. I was on Beach Bay Road, and I remember going fast, and it's a little light ladder, so it was me. So then I had to think, oh goodness, do I do I just say, okay, I'm gonna find out later and not admit it. So I had as much as I preached to the guys about being honest and having integrity and all, I had to sit them down. I said, guys, I hate to admit this, is it? But that was me. And I said, I'm sorry for accusing you. And I'm sure some of them, you know, snickered to themselves and laughed at me later on, but it was a moment where I think our employees thought, you know, he's willing to fess up. He could have hidden it. And uh and I think that's when I gained a lot more respect from from my employees than had I covered it up and thought, oh, Mr. Perfect, that would never happen to me. So I I learned a lot from that lesson. And first of all, not to really accuse people unless you really know what's going on. But it was me.

Amy Dardis 29:45

Were you was that something where you wrestled with that a little bit? Or did was it like, no, you know, I need to fess up because I'm never gonna be able to have peace if I don't?

SPEAKER_02 29:58

Shamelessly I did wrestle with it. I mean, it was a couple of minutes of thinking, well, you know, like you can nobody has to know it was you. And then it just didn't feel right.

Amy Dardis 30:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

And I could have gotten away with it. And I mean, there's probably been other times where I've lied my way out of it. I'm not I'm not gonna try to, you know, I'm not you'll never find a halo over my head. But um, that particular time, and and I've tried since then. We we have a core value in our company that's called integrity and all. And we we really we believe in that and we abide, we abide by that.

Amy Dardis 30:31

How how did you come up with your core values? At what point did you decide that you needed to define them and write them out?

SPEAKER_02 30:39

The first one with the the first one was give a great service. And I didn't really know they were core values, Amy.

Amy Dardis 30:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 30:46

I didn't know what a core value was. I did like I said, I didn't know what a spreadsheet was. I didn't know what a profit and loss or a balance sheet was. You know, I had no idea what any of this stuff stuff was until I'd been in business a few years. But I did know that we needed to give great service and go. And when I talk about great service, I mean we we had a lady that was her attic access was in her bathroom and she was moving her things off the counter and she dropped her perfume and it broke all over the floor. She dropped it. But she was doing it to accommodate us so we could get in. So I made a note of what kind of perfume it was. And when we took a break, I went I bought her that perfume and brought it and gave it to her. And so just little little touches like that have what made our company uh popular and that some people would never ever think about using anybody else.

SPEAKER_03 31:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:39

Given impeccable service was the first core value. And another one was when we we tried to uh we tried to cheat on immigration. We you have to have a work permit in order to work in the Cayman Islands. And we had a another company where there was an American guy that was at another company that didn't have much work, and they asked us if we wanted to borrow him for a couple of weeks. And without thinking of knowing it was wrong, I said, sure, we'll try him out. Because we were gonna try him out and then maybe hire him because we needed somebody. So they had no work. We had plenty of work. And after about two weeks, I thought, yeah, this guy's good. Let let's let's hire him. So we're gonna put out a take out a permit for him. So the guy went and got his permit pictures. You have to get like passport pictures. He got his pictures, he filled out his thing, he brought them to me. Now he's working with us illegally. He's not supposed to be. He has a permit, but it's with a different company. He brings in his paperwork with his picture to ask for permission from the government if he can work with polar bear. And he's his picture is in polar bear uniform. And so we're basically telling on ourselves. So I said, Joe, I said, please. It did that's when it hit me that you're doing this all wrong. This is not how you run a business. I said, go back to your company as soon as we'll put in the go take different pictures out of our uniform, and we'll we'll get a permit the legal way. And then that became our second core value, integrity and all. And and so it's easy though to kind of justify. And because of my justification, well, well, he has a permit, it's just not with us, and he doesn't have any work there. And we're helping them, we're helping him, we're helping ourselves. Nobody, you know, nobody loses. But I've I've learned that if you if you stick to integrity and all, you don't have to cover yourself, you know, you don't have to hide things, you don't have to remember lies, you don't have to, you know. So that that was our second core value. But we we actually just came up with core values probably 15 years ago where we actually called them core values. And I wanted to make sure that it wasn't just things that are stuck on the wall, that they're things that we live out. And so we hire people based on our core values. One of them is we're family-oriented. And if we don't think somebody fits in with the family, then we don't we don't hire them.

Hiring For Culture And Living Values

Amy Dardis 34:02

How do you check for that? Or how do you see if they're family-oriented?

SPEAKER_02 34:07

Personally, what I like to do, now I'm out of the company now for for a few months. What I would do, almost everyone that applied, because our interview process is somebody flying overseas to come and spend a few days with us. So I would do a couple of things. I would have an event where a lot of the people in the company were involved, maybe a picnic, maybe a softball or a volleyball game and see how they conduct themselves. And then take them to restaurants and see how they treat the weight staff.

Amy Dardis 34:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 34:35

So that's been a secret of mine that I would just watch people and how they interact with the weight staff. If they're very demanding, and then that's not somebody that would fit in, you know, with in our atmosphere in our company. But if they're very kind and, you know, and they're laughing and joking, then that's somebody that fits in well.

Amy Dardis 34:54

Did you ever have somebody that you came over and you were just like appalled at how they acted in a restaurant?

SPEAKER_02 35:02

Yeah, so some some guys, you know, didn't show up. They they would we would fly them out. Well, we would I was smart about that. We would give them half of their money after they bought their ticket and came out. But we we had a couple of guys over the years that their first night out, they got just completely rat faced. They would go out to a bar and they they couldn't even come in for the interview. So they basically fired themselves before they before they got the job.

Amy Dardis 35:27

Mm-hmm. So you were able to see like them in in real life in specific situations instead of just asking them how do you handle it.

SPEAKER_02 35:39

No, I I never drink.

Amy Dardis 35:41

Do you have like when would you do a lot of the interviews when you I would do almost all of the interviews?

SPEAKER_02 35:48

I have a little bit of intuition after all the years of of of doing things. And I let like you're letting me do a lot of the talking. I would normally let the applicant do a lot of the talking. So in and the more people talk, the more they they give up of themselves, the more vulnerable they become. And I would like to have one of our staff members, one of our female staff members, because you all have a lot better intuition than we do. Somebody can tell me this, this, and this, and I'll believe them. Because I would tend to sell myself short and want to pleasantly surprise somebody. So if somebody I'm really good at something, and if somebody asks me, I'll say, I'm all right at it. And then I want to surprise them later and let them see, wow, this guy is good. And so I think everybody's like that, but not all people. So I sell myself short, so I don't trust my instinct sometimes when somebody tells me something. So I'll get one of the ladies, one of our lady managers, as part of the interview process. And I find that you all have a six, that sixth sense that knows certain things. And I think there's been a couple of ladies in the office that saved us, you know, a lot of heartache by saying, I don't have a good feeling about this guy. And then we did, and then we find out something later.

Amy Dardis 37:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

So we use kind of a team approach to hire to hire people, and there's always a lady involved in the in the decision-making process.

Amy Dardis 37:14

What are what are some other kind of intuitions or things that you've just picked up on over the years when you're interviewing? Like things you look for, questions you ask?

SPEAKER_02 37:25

One of the things is like with a resume, when I see, I mean, this is obvious, when you see holes in somebody's resume, or when you see four jobs over 20 years and they don't list any of those people as references. So I always check those references. I check, they'll have references, but it'll be, you know, it could be their uncle for all I know. I I or their best friend. I don't know. So I make it a point to go the extra mile and I find these companies and I and I call them up. And that's one thing that I found is very helpful because people don't put you as a reference for a reason.

Amy Dardis 38:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 38:04

It's true. Yeah.

Amy Dardis 38:06

What are you you said you're you're really big on making sure you're that your core values aren't just something that are on a wall. How how have you ingrained your core values into your We have what's called Core Wednesday, which the first Wednesday of every month, we focus on a core value.

SPEAKER_02 38:27

So and one like why we'll it'll be something different. It'll usually be some sign of kind of team building thing. So we'll do provide a great service is a hundred percent satisfaction, is one of our core values. One day we we split the the teams up into like five groups, and we gave them 15 minutes to come up with a mime or a skit without words. And so it's amazing how creative people can be. We had people sitting the customer down, polishing their shoes, shining their head, and get doing their nails while one of them's changing his filter, and it's hilarious. But we we do skits like that. We do all kinds of team building things where we just focus on that, on that value. We've taken them to a restaurant where we we knew the service was suspect or that that they could improve the service. Okay. And and one of the things our prices, I mean we hire the best people we can find, and our prices reflect that. And uh, so we're one of the more higher priced companies in Cayman. And to to justify that, we we've taken them to like a normal restaurant, our technicians will sit down, we'll have a meal and have them observe the service, and then we'll take them like to the Ritz-Carlton, where by the end of the night the waiter knows each of their first names, knows their kids and things like that. And then we'll do a little study on and say, what was the difference? How did this make you feel? How did, you know, it's backfired on us a couple of times because the the the cheaper restaurant that we took them to actually provided better service. But they they noticed the little things.

SPEAKER_03 40:05

But they noticed.

SPEAKER_02 40:06

Yeah, they noticed the little things that uh the waiters did and and didn't do. And so we'll do outings like that to uh for training and uh and just to show them how what our core values look like in action.

Amy Dardis 40:22

Those are really great ideas. I mean, how how did you like these are all just like off-the-cuff ideas, like not your standard, you know, boardroom type of training. How did you come up with with stuff like this?

SPEAKER_02 40:36

I I have no idea. The same way I've figured out how to steal the organist's shoe at church. The organist every Sunday takes her shoes off to play the organ. And for years and years I would take her shoe, one shoe, and then we'd pass it around the church. And so just weird odd things pop into my mind. Some of them are bizarre and some of them work out. Um they don't always work out, but just they God bless me with a creative mind. And uh I I use it to for the good and I use it for mischief.

Creative Marketing And The Polar Bear

Amy Dardis 41:07

So what are you said that you've done some creative stuff with your marketing as well. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_02 41:15

We we have a uh we have a bear that we bought from a museum in a polar bear that we bought from a museum in in Montreal. Okay. And we brought him on the island, and we we put him, I had surgery on my shoulder a few years back, and I put him in front of my house. I had a sling, and the bear had a sling on him. He's sitting outside of my house, and it says, get well, get well, Chuck. We had a customer who was a judge that was retiring, and we took the bear and we've got, you know, those English wigs that the judges wear? We put that on him and put a little robe thing on him, and we put him out at the courthouse. They weren't happy about that. We just kind of rogue guerrilla marketing, and we put a sign, congratulations, judge so and so, Judge Smelly. And uh it made the newspaper actually, but the the clerk of the court called us, who gave you permission to do this? And I'm not really sure. Let me check with my marketing department and then see. And then by the time, you know, it was we were gonna get in trouble, I had the guys go grab him. And so we take him took him to the airport after COVID when because our island shut down completely. And we had him in like a one of these touristy shirts with a camera around his in this straw hat and said, Welcome back to the Cayman Islands. But that that's some of the fun things that we've we've been able to do. One yellow page ad, which everybody told me not to do, I put all the guys in with bags over their heads and little eye holes. And the caption was we may be ugly, but we're good. Just I've broken the rules on almost every marketing thing. My daughter's doing marketing now, she's a little more tame than I am.

Amy Dardis 42:58

But did that, I mean, you probably got so much feedback from your customers on like, oh my gosh, I saw your bat or I saw your polar bear.

SPEAKER_02 43:08

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and kids, we we had one customer that told me our kid, okay, because we weren't real heavy on it at one time. In fact, we ruined him because we he's out in the rain and the elements. But we had one customer that said, Where's the polar bear this weekend? My kids are asking about him. There's bear driving around trying to find him. That's a cool name that we can do a lot with. We've been able to do a lot with his with his the polar bear in the came afterwards.

Amy Dardis 43:33

Yeah, which is also just kind of a little bit of a contradiction, too.

SPEAKER_02 43:37

You know, yeah. You don't have many polar bears in the yeah, iguana air didn't have the same ring to it as polar bear here.

Amy Dardis 43:44

Um that's and and I mean, are these like you have this creative spirit? Is it something that you've also been able to kind of do you how do you feel like you attract employees who also kind of bring a creative energy? Or you kind of instill that into the environment there?

SPEAKER_02 44:06

I I think to an extent you you can uh instill it. So m my guys will they'll they'll hear that a customer's sick and they'll stop by the grocery store and and buy a bouquet of flowers or stop by a florist and they'll buy some flowers and take to their because I had one guy that uh he was at this lady's house and her grass was like up to his knees and he went around, he couldn't even find the air conditioning unit. And on his lunch break, he went and he rented a mower and he mowed the lady's grass for free. So that came natural to him, but he felt the freedom to be able to do it because he worked. I mean, we've we've had we've had longtime customers. We had one lady I I recall that had cancer and she lived alone. And a couple of our technicians on the weekend would go by and sit with her and and then you know, she didn't have any family, they would just sit with her. I didn't even know about this until later on. So we try to hire that type of people, but as far as you can instill a certain amount, I mean we've had contests where who can do the most outlandish thing for a customer. And it doesn't reach my level of outlandishness, but they they still they're they're constantly reminded that we're we're not in the air conditioning business, we're in the people business. You know, and yeah, we want to keep them cool, but it's because they're people and they they deserve to to have a comfortable environment to live in. But that that's one of the hardest things to remember is that we're in the people business. We're not and then that goes for any industry.

Amy Dardis 45:35

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 45:37

You know, you're if you pump gas at a I guess they don't do that in the US anymore, but if you work at a gas station, if you weren't there, people would not have couldn't put gasoline in their car. And they couldn't get to where they need to get. And so we're we're in the people business. And and then nowadays, Amy, we're not competing against, you know, people in Mayberry. Or are you in Palmer? We're in Alaska.

Amy Dardis 46:00

Yeah, Palmer, Alaska.

SPEAKER_02 46:02

You know, you're not competing with people in Palmer, Alaska anymore because people have interactions with people globally. So we're in competition with Disney World, or we're in competition with Universal, with Dunkin' Donuts, and it's no more just this local yokel thing where we just have to be the best game in town. We're competing against some big players.

Amy Dardis 46:23

For time and attention, always. Always. Yeah. But you have made an intentional focus to keep it just human first and foremost, like just people, people, people.

SPEAKER_02 46:35

And and fun. And it's been fun. One one of the things that I had forgotten about, one of the a lot of the our guys will get we'll have a meeting in the morning, and then we have a lot of camaraderie. I mean, these guys are come from 14 different countries, and they're they still they're like best friends. And it's really hard to get them out to get them. So I've had to take a big black cat thing of firecrackers and actually throw it into the meeting room, and that's when that's when they scatter. So that's one of the creative ways that we've used to get them out without lecturing them, you know? That hurts had that popping in your ear. But one one thing that I want to uh just say is that I I don't have a business degree. Uh-huh. I don't have any degree. And in fact, I have no degree. I never went to college. I went to trade school to learn air conditioning. And I know a lot of people say this, well, if I can do it, anybody can, but I I truly mean that. I have I was the least likely person to get into some mechanical field. I did nothing. I mean, a lot of boys put take things apart and put them back together. I just took them apart. I didn't.

Amy Dardis 47:41

And blew up.

SPEAKER_02 47:44

Not to limit your field, because I never imagined I would be a businessman. I knew nothing about business. I didn't have that drive, and I had no mechanical skills. So it's almost God's humor, that sense of humor that got me into a mechanism, a field that I would never imagine myself in. And I just ended up in air conditioning by accident. Even today, I still, if we, if if grandkids think we need a dollhouse put put together something, I have to bring my wife in. I said, kid, where does this go? So I want to encourage people. You're not just when you're dealt with um talents and skills, you're not limited to those. You know, God has been able to use my creativity and my my sense of humor in a serious field, like a techno technical field. When I never I never imagined that that would that would happen.

Amy Dardis 48:35

I thought you had to be like a stand-up comic to be to be funny, but I do I do love that you said that, that God, that God uses whatever we have. And oftentimes it's things that one, we probably don't even see that we have it or value it the way that God does and that other people do, but that what he can do with it when we're willing to to give it to him first is a multiplication. Yeah.

Writing Leap Before You Look But God

Amy Dardis 49:02

So at what point along this journey did you decide that you wanted to write this book?

SPEAKER_02 49:09

I think that probably from early in my life when all these things I I think I always knew I was gonna write a book. I didn't know what I was gonna write it about, but I I thought my life is gonna be in just being mischievous in school. I had my sixth grade teacher told me I was the worst student she had ever had, and she'd been teaching for like 20 something years. So I thought, well, at least I'm the best at being the worst. But and then my mother had a really interesting story. She she had, I mean, it's way more interesting than my story. And she started writing a book, but she passed away before she finished it. So I really started, I thought, I'm gonna write a book and honor my mom. And then I started writing my stories down, and I thought, wow, you have a lot of stories. And um, then I started writing my book and putting my mom in it, and then about three-quarters of the way through, I got a little tap on my shoulder, and it was like it was the Holy Spirit saying, Really? You're leaping me out of this. I mean, there was some scriptures and things in the book, and it it wasn't obviously, I mean, it wasn't there wasn't anything bad in it, but I wasn't focusing on that. I was telling stories so people would look and say, Wow, look at all the the fun, crazy stuff this guy did. And and that's when I got reminded none of this would have been possible without without God. And so it it started with wanting to write a tribute for my mom, and then my stories came in, and then it became a faith book. Um But it's a typical faith book. I mean, it's not you're like you can you can turn one page and you'll be laughing, and and the next page you might be crying, and the next page you might learn a a life lesson. It might cause you to go pick up the phone and say, Hey, I guess we don't do that anymore. Send a text, I'm sorry, and and say, Hey, sis, you know, sorry about last weekend or sorry about last year. So I'm I'm hoping that uh there'll be some that there's a lot of life lessons and and I hope to be able to impart, you know, a little bit of wisdom in there.

Amy Dardis 51:12

What do you how did how did that change in in focus of it becoming a faith book? How did that change the way that you wrote the book or the way that you presented the lessons?

SPEAKER_02 51:25

Um I think at the at the end of each story I had to look at it and say, okay, Chuck, what's your point here? Are you you're trying to glorify yourself? Are you trying to glorify your mother, or does this give God the glory? And so in in the ending part of the book, uh I started praying before I wrote. And to make sure that what I was writing was, you know, was was coming from the spirit. And uh Yeah, so it was a slow, it was a slow process, and I had to write a lot of chapters over. But I at the end of each chapter I wanted to make sure that there was something there that that focused on the Holy Spirit God or that his mark on my life. And then it wasn't just, oh wow, this guy's crazy, you know.

Amy Dardis 52:11

Yeah. And so what would you say is is the overall like kind of themes or lessons behind the book itself with all the stories?

SPEAKER_02 52:22

There's a bunch of different things. One the the one of the main things is you you don't necessarily have to prepare for everything. And if you wait until you're ready, you you're gonna be waiting a long time. Yeah, because sometimes we're I mean, we're never ready for most things. Uh this podcast, I I could still be trying to figure out what I'm gonna say and and writing it down, but just jump on and do it. Uh you you wanna go, you your dream has always been to go to Italy. Book your ticket now and and force yourself, get a non-refundable ticket, buy it now, and then you have to go, you know? So I I really don't, I mean, I think you should prepare, but I think being ready is way, way overrated. We're we're not ready for 99% of the things that we think we need to be ready for. You don't get ready to get fit, you just get fit. You don't get ready to become a Christian. It's you know, I often compare it to people don't become a Christian because, oh, I'm too dirty. Um but you don't take a shower in order to get in the bathtub. You get in the bathtub, you take a shower in the bathtub to get clean. And people we treat Christ like that. Oh, once I get my life together, then I'm gonna become a Christian. It doesn't work that way. I mean, the very it's like saying I'm gonna clean up, then I'll take a bath. So I want I want people to to be willing to leap before you look. Sometimes, you know, it's worked out for me. Maybe not for everything, I mean not to the extent that I do it, but you you will, if you wait until you're ready, you'll never be ready. Another thing is to look and say, wow, this guy's done a lot of adventurous things. He's had an adventurous, fun-filled, Christ-filled life. I didn't know Christianity could be this much fun. Uh I thought you had to be, and I struggled with that because I was a mischievous kid, and I would prank, I would prank the Pope if I got the chance. And I struggled with that thinking, this is a a little Christian boy who wears glasses, he reads his Bible every day, he has knee socks on, and he never he makes straight A's, and he always says yes, ma'am, and no, ma'am. And I've realized that God can use my adventurous spirit and my untamed part of me for his glory. And so there's things in the book where you, you know, it will challenge you to go make amends life too short. Don't let that this little spat, you know, interrupt great uh relationship with your brothers or your sisters or your mothers or your best friend that you guys and the other thing is a lot of my greatest successes, what I would call successes, came from misfortune. Um being homeless on the beach, getting fired from a job. These things have led to something. So sometimes a misfortune, that breakup that everybody but you wanted to happen might be for the better. Losing that job that, you know, you were crushed, it it might be the best thing that ever happened to you. Even a diagnosis, you know, a health diagnosis, it doesn't that might be the start of something big that God is gonna do in in our lives. And so I've learned that misfortune doesn't always, you know, lead to something bad. Sometimes something very good.

Amy Dardis 55:39

Yeah. Yeah. I know for me, some of the biggest breakthroughs I've ever had have come through really, really tough season. You know, and not to see that as a failure, but just to see that as that's part of the journey. Yeah. Yeah. I do like what you said about how God can use it, but it's like, but he created you that way. He designed you that way. I mean, he he already had that purpose in you to know that he he would use your creativity and your mis your mischievousness. And I love that your life is an example of how he used it in business, how he used it in your relationships, how how you've then, you know, rippled that effect. And he's been able to work in and through you into your employees and your customers, you know, because you've been willing to just give them what you have.

SPEAKER_02 56:30

Yeah. And especially in my kids, my kids have lived through all of these things. There's been some crazy things happen to my kids on our trips because we always do something. We go, we go always go over the over the limit, and something always happens. But my my children today, they're they're all adults now. And I must say they're they're they're caring, loving, uh give the shirt off their back type of people that bend over backwards for people. They're just good, good human beings. And although they weren't taught to wear their seatbelt all their lives, they all put their seatbelt on. My philosophy was safety's for sissies. And if all four of them up right now, and I said safety is fork, they'll say sissies. But they're very safety conscious, you know, unlike unlike me. So yeah, so it's had a ripple effect in in everything that that that we touch. And sometimes, Amy, to be honest with you, I I I think that some one day somebody's gonna come knock on my door and they're gonna say, Chuck, there's been a mistake. This life, this this life wasn't meant for you. There's a mistake, and come with me. And then somebody else is gonna step through the door and and live the life that they're it's been. God has been so good to me. I mean, this guy's getting like chill bumps saying that. But I just feel like the goodness of God is is something that I will never stop, you know, shouting to the that's my favorite song.

SPEAKER_01 57:52

I will stop of the goodness of God. I love that song.

Amy Dardis 57:57

Me too. And you have a beautiful voice, by the way, too.

SPEAKER_01 58:00

Oh nobody's accused me of that. Thank you though. Maybe I'll do an album next instead of a book.

Amy Dardis 58:09

I love your boldness and your willingness to jump in because I am the have always been on the opposite of that, where I have I feel like I have let fear rule me in so many different ways. And so then I'm encouraged when I talk to people like you and hear your stories where I'm like, okay, you know, and I'm actively in a season of just really trying to be like, okay, what am I afraid of? And then do it because I don't, I don't want to be afraid anymore.

SPEAKER_02 58:38

Yeah. So just so your move to Alaska was, if I understand right, it was like spur of the moment and you just you just win. Not everybody does that, Amy. So don't sell yourself short, you know. That's that's a big, that's a big move, especially. And it's not like moving to Delaware or to New Jersey. You're going to Alaska.

Amy Dardis 58:56

Yeah. So it's been an adventure. But again, one of those things where I I look back and just only God, right? I mean, just just God's grace through the season, his goodness through it, even through a lot of really, really difficult things. But also, same with you. I look at my life and I'm like, I can't believe that this is my life. I just I I don't deserve it, you know. And I'm I feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, for it to be like, just kidding, you know. And yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:28

Or you wake up and it was a dream. Say, no, man, that's yeah.

Amy Dardis 59:31

So, but I mean, and then that is just to me, like just life with God, right? This roller coaster of relying on him daily, but it's just it it will blow your mind. I mean and and you have a whole book about it, about all the stories and the ways that God and I love that you you were willing to be obedient to that and to write the book the way he wanted you to write it.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:01

Yeah, thank you.

Amy Dardis 1:00:02

That's awesome.

Final Advice And Where To Find Chuck

Amy Dardis 1:00:03

Okay. Well, Chuck, any final thoughts for the listeners?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:08

Words of wisdom. What are the words of wisdom I would have? I don't know. We can all, you know, that don't try to get to always try to be ready because we're never gonna be ready. Though those things that you're thinking about doing dig up those those old dreams. Everybody can, you know, it also I know it's cliche. I hate using cliches, but you know, a mile hike starts with the first step. And and once you start taking some some small steps, you get you get momentum. And then sometimes we have setbacks. I always think of when you have a setback is like if you want to, yeah, if you ever, you're in Alaska, you've probably done this in the last month. You a car getting stuck or something, you don't just push the car like that. You go back and then you push into the car to get some momentum. So sometimes, you know, life feels like you know, I've gone three steps forward and then two steps back. Well, sometimes those two steps back it are is the momentum that we need to push, to push forward. So that would that would be my little nugget that I would leave listeners with right now.

Amy Dardis 1:01:17

That's really good. I've actually I've never heard it said that way before. I like that a lot.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:22

I just thought of it, or the Holy Spirit just put it in my mind. Something like that.

Amy Dardis 1:01:27

So you can follow Chuck. He has a website, chuckmobley.com, and then his book is available on Amazon. It's also a number one bestseller in the men's Christian living category. So it's Leap Before You Look, but God by Chuck Mobley. And I'll link that in the show notes. But uh, Chuck, thank you so much for being here today.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:50

Thank you, Amy. I really appreciate the the time. I'm new to this, this podcasting stuff. I don't even know that I knew what a podcast was like two months ago. I mean, I knew it was something that you you tuned in and you listened to something you were interested in, but I certainly had never been on one. But I've been on a few now and I'm I'm enjoying it. I I really appreciate your kindness and you allowing me to be on your on your show and spend time with you and your your listeners.

Amy Dardis 1:02:17

Yeah, well, you brought so much value and insight. It was a great conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:22

All right, thank you, Amy. I appreciate it.

Amy Dardis 1:02:24

Awesome. All right, well, that is all for this episode, and I will see you guys next time.