Page 54 - Careers & Stuff 2021

Making a New Start
THESE DELAWAREANS SUCCESSFULLY RETRAINED FOR A NEW CAREER
MATT MINOR
“Being an employer,” says Matt Minor, owner of Wilmington-based Subcool Heating and Air, “is kind of like being a psychologist.”
Minor grew up in North and East Wilmington in the 1980s. He saw firsthand what crack and heroin did
to those communities. And, he got wrapped up in it himself, eventually serving 10 years in federal prison for drug trafficking. With that time behind him, Minor made a big change in his life — he lobbied his counselor, and then his counselor’s supervisor at the Delaware Department of Labor, to fund his training in HVAC. Then, he lobbied the Delaware Skills Center — a Division of the New Castle County Vocational Technical School District — to give him a chance.
“I used to get in trouble, I used to be in the streets, so I went to the skills center. They were a little hesitant about taking me, because I had just come from federal prison,” Minor says. “But they took me. I went through their program, did really well in their program, and started my own HVAC
BY MATT WARD
and plumbing company.”
Today, after four years in business
for himself, Minor employs anywhere from seven to 12 people at a time, depending on how many projects he has going, and he makes a point of hiring graduates from the Delaware Skills Center, the Dawn Career Institute in Newark, and other similar training hubs, with a focus on students from historically underserved communities.
“We have a population, especially here in Wilmington, where the manufacturing base left years ago and drugs came into the neighborhoods, so we have a bunch of younger people — young men especially — whose only option really is music, sports or drugs,” Minor says. “And you know there’s not many making it in sports or music, so we have this huge population that end up in the prisons.”
The psychologist part of being a boss, Minor says, comes into play when he acts as mentor to his employees.
He has steered a few toward drug counseling, and he offers use of an
old company van for those who don’t otherwise have transportation. Basically, he keeps an eye on them. Drug use, he
says, is not uncommon in the trades, where workers can get injured and wind up on prescription medication. “It’s not a high instance. I have some great employees that have no history of using drugs,” Minor notes, “but there is a likelihood that one in 10 or one in 20, they bring some baggage.”
Having successfully changed his own life — through self-advocacy, training and business acumen — Minor is not shy in discussing his path. “I always tell people — I told them at the graduation at the skills center — if I can do it, anybody can do it, because there’s nothing special about me,” he says. “I guess maybe there are some people who look forward to being
in jail, but I can testify that it’s not a great place and it’s not a place I’d
ever want to go again, and one thing
it makes you realize — well, it should make you realize — is that you’re doing something really, really wrong, and
it’s not working. That’s the realization that I came to, along with the fact that I have children and I have to leave a legacy, and my legacy can’t be one of
'I did time.' That’s not the legacy that I want to leave.”
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