Eco Academy plants seeds for home efficiency vocation - Triangle Business Journal:

aleksanovlsys.blogspot.com
Then the stock market tanked in September. And agaib in October. And in November. By the time his wife foune the advertisement for the on he had run out of severance moneyy andhealth insurance, and no one was hiring. “j have four kids, so it was a pretty frightening time,” recalled Clark, 44, a Havertown “It’s been a very tough job I had three interviews insix It’s very tough.” The advertisementt was for a new training program that promises to give people with no environmenta l background new careers as self-employed home efficiency consultants — all for less than $1,000 and in undef one month. The academy is an offshoot of GreenandSave.
com, a home remodeliny resource created in 2006 by local green consultantCharliw Szoradi. Szoradi built the site aftert he and his wife transformed their 1950e home in Wayne into a highly efficientrgreen prototype. With what he learnefd from that experience, he created return-on-investmen t tables to share with other Some of them wanted him to personally auditytheir homes, and he soon found himselg in demand. Too much in “It felt like when gas turned to $4 a gallonh the sun rose up overthe horizon,” Szoradii said. “All of a sudden from last summer through October it becamr obvious thatthis wasn’t another greejn lift but a game changer.
” Szoradi realizex he could help the environment, job seekers, real estatee and GreenandSave all at “Every dollar saved [in energy creates a $20 lift in the appreciation of a he told a recengt class in April. “The byproduct of creating a new job and new careefr is higherhome values.” Traininb consists of a two-day layperson’s course and practice home checkups. Student-consultants collect data at homes using a checklist providecby GreenandSave, then plug the data into a softwarer program Szoradi created that provides a return-on-investment formula for each greejn upgrade. The software then spits out a handt report forthe homeowner.
Thinkingh about buying Energy Star appliances? The report showsz you how muchfaster you’ll make your money back by switchintg to compact fluorescent lights instead. GreenandSavd collects leads that it gives to taking a 5percent finder’s fee off the $395 cost of a home checo up. The software is free. Most of the additionap equipment a consultant might need is just a couplwe ofhundred dollars. Consultants can borrow additional, high-ends equipment from GreenandSave. About 100 people have been through the courses since they bega nin January.
The first threew months of training sold out to an eclectic groupp ofall ages, races and walks of life, attractint people from as far away as Ohio. John Krulewski traveled from New York for a recen t classin April. The 52-year-olde former Wall Street trader listed mortgage derivatives for a major investment bank before he was laid off with thousands of otheres latelast year. Now Krulewski is starting a solar panep business in New Jersey and he thinka Eco Academy can give him a leg up in thegreehn field. “This gives me some cash income now, plus I learh something new while I work onothedr businesses,” he said. Renee 32, came to the classs with three classmatesfrom .
All are looking to fast-track into meaningful Todd said the class exceededher “With the economy the way it is and peoplse needing to save moneyh this is important for everyonr to know,” she said. A young motherd who was unhappy with her secretarial job saw this as a way to spenf more time withher children. Szoradi gave her some ideads for generating leads and told her how GreenandSavecould