Question about reinventing yourself after years in one lane

I spent 11 years as a service tech at the same HVAC company in Phoenix, always fixing the same types of units, following the same checklists. Then last spring I went independent and tried doing repairs for restaurants and small shops. About 4 months in, a buddy of mine who runs a food truck said my diagnostic method was backwards, that I focused on the thermostat first when I should have checked the compressor relay. I laughed it off, but the next call had the exact same issue and I tried his way, and it worked in 15 minutes instead of my usual 2 hours of wandering. That's when it hit me: I had been doing the same routine for over a decade, not because it was best, but because it was comfortable. Since then I've rebuilt my whole approach from scratch, and honestly my fallback rate went from 1 in 6 to maybe 1 in 15. Has anyone else had that moment where a random comment from someone outside your field tipped you off to your own blind spots?

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green.jenny6d ago

Yeah, a customer's offhand comment about my billing system completely changed how I run things now!