Tony Buhl | EnergX

Tony Buhl started life in a holler in east Tennessee where no one had running water or electricity. He told us that no one he knew had ever even finished high school because they had to quit school to work on the farm. Tony was lucky enough to find a great teacher at school who really believed in him and his ability to excel. His teacher helped him get through high school and apply for college, he got into school at UT and received a scholarship. He decided to become a nuclear engineer. Tony finished his undergraduate degree and was able to continue on to graduate school where he worked on electronics for his PhD. After graduate school he and some friends decided to start a business selling some of the electrical instrumentation that they had developed while in school. Tony and his college buddies did a lot of business selling instrumentation to measure flow in nuclear power plants. Non of the employees had any business education so they drew straws and Tony ended up having to go back to school. He also spent a good bit of time in the military. He then help to found 3 other companies and became a senior executive at a large international company. He founded EnergX in 1997 as a service disabled veteran owned small business to contract with DOD and DOE for environmental management. Specifically EnergX specializes in decontamination and decomission of nuclear facilities. One of EnergX bigger projects was the complete dismantlement of a nuclear facility located just north of Denver Colorado. Tony's company has been declared one of the best environmental management by its certification as ISO 14001. Tony had some great words of advice for young entrepreneurs. He said that he believed in failing forward, " Experience doesn't come from doing great things it comes from learning from the things you don't do so well." Its human nature to resist change but young people who want to be successful should embrace change as opportunity. He parted us by quoting Henry Fords famous philosophy that "Whether you believe you can or you believe you can't, your right"