Air Conditioning Company Cranks up the Heat with New Business Start

AC Plus Heating and Air of Hillsborough County

After working in the air conditioning business for 10 years and helping other businesses became successful within the field, Nicholas Porshian, decided it was his turn to create something that wasn’t only centered around gaining revenue. With his first-hand experience on how the business works coupled with his school education on the matter, Porshian decided to start his own company, AC Plus Heating and Air. “The reason why we started this business was to help the people in Florida get their heating and cooling air solutions, so we created the company just around the customers in order to help them manage their AC at the best level possible,” Porshian said.

Although an expert in his field, Porshian sought out the help of his local Florida Small Business Development Center at the University of South Florida for guidance on proper business procedures. After reaching out, the business owner was paired with Florida SBDC at USF business consultant, Christine Jaros, who helped him through the challenges that many small business owners face when starting out.

“Florida SBDC, especially the one in USF, they helped us maneuver through so many challenges that we had at the beginning. You have to fill out so many documentations. Like insurance paperwork, so many options to choose from and finding the right niche that’s going to be fitting for our business, going to be very crucial to success,” Porshian said.

Since working with Jaros, the small business owner has shown growth by taking an idea and creating it into a reality through guidance on multiple business areas. “We learned a lot from working with SBDC, like through different consultation sessions that they have. They helped us with marketing, with the business aspect of the business. They helped us with the financing, they also helped us with designing a brochure, going over the details to make sure that we can rely on them,” Porshian expressed.

As for their biggest success, Porshian mentions that his company is already becoming successful because it is able to help the community. “For us our success is to help the community, so we donate to different organizations, we help so many different charities, and also our prices are like the lowest in the market. The reason for that is that we are not focused on generating the money. We are focused on helping the community and during that process the community is going to help us by giving us more business, that is our business ideology,” he said.

As his business continues to grow, Porshian explains that he will use the Florida SBDC at USF as much as possible. “Down the road we’re still going to use Florida SBDC in the USF location because first, it’s close to our business and second, they have the experts,” Nicholas Porshian said.

When asked if he would give any advice to other small business owners, Porshian said, “We suggest all the businesses basically that are in Florida to use this organization.” Later adding, “Starting a business is always challenging so one thing is to have somebody guide you during those challenges and Florida SBDC was one of those resources that we could trust at the beginning, starting the business, by asking them the right questions and getting the right answers.”