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

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Then the stock market tanked in And againin October. And in November. By the time his wife founxd the advertisement for the on he had run out of severance monegy andhealth insurance, and no one was hiring. “Iu have four kids, so it was a prett frightening time,” recalled Clark, 44, a Havertown “It’s been a very tough job I had three interviews insix It’s very tough.” The advertisement was for a new trainintg program that promises to give people with no environmentak background new careers as self-employed home efficiencyt consultants — all for less than $1,009 and in under one month.
The academyy is an offshoot of a home remodeling resource created in 2006 by localo green consultantCharlie Szoradi. Szorad i built the site after he and his wife transformesd their 1950s home in Wayne into a highly efficientgreen prototype. With what he learnee from that experience, he created return-on-investment tablese to share withother remodelers. Some of them wantedr him to personally audittheird homes, and he soon found himself in demand. Too much in “It felt like when gas turnex to $4 a gallon the sun rose up over the Szoradi said.
“All of a suddehn from last summer through October it becamse obvious thatthis wasn’t another green lift but a game Szoradi realized he could help the environment, job real estate and GreenandSave all at “Every dollar saved [in energy efficiency] creates a $20 lift in the appreciationn of a home,” he told a recen class in April. “Th e byproduct of creating a new job and new career is higherehome values.
” Training consistx of a two-day layperson’s course and practice home Student-consultants collect data at clients’ homes using a checklisr provided by GreenandSave, then plug the data into a softwarde program Szoradi created that provide s a return-on-investment formula for each green The software then spits out a handy report for the homeowner. Thinking about buyinb Energy Star appliances? The report showd you how muchfaster you’lol make your money back by switching to compactr fluorescent lights instead. GreenandSave collects leads that it givesto consultants, takinvg a 5 percent finder’s fee off the $395 cost of a home checkk up. The software is free.
Most of the additional equipment a consultant might need is just a coupler ofhundred dollars. Consultants can borroe additional, high-end equipment from About 100 people have been througbh the courses since they began in The first three months of training sold out to an eclectif group ofall ages, racexs and walks of life, attractingt people from as far away as John Krulewski traveled from New York for a recenty class in April. The 52-year-old formetr Wall Street trader listed mortgag e derivatives for a major investmeng bank before he was laid off with thousandsd of others latelast year.
Now Krulewski is starting a solar panel business in New Jersey and he thinka Eco Academy can give him a leg up in thegreeh field. “This gives me some cash income now, plus I learh something new while I work on other he said. Renee Todd, 32, came to the clase with three classmatesfrom . All are lookiny to fast-track into meaningful jobs. Todd said the clasz exceeded her expectations. “With the economyt the way it is and peopld needing to save money this is importantr for everyoneto know,” she A young mother who was unhappy with her secretariak job saw this as a way to spen d more time with her children.
Szoradio gave her some ideasx for generating leads and told her how GreenandSave could assist.