A company I'd be proud to work for
What kept pulling me in was how HTS operates. The deeper I read, the clearer the pattern: doing things the right way over the long term. Retention built on real training, a Black Hawk seat earned through internal progression rather than outside hiring, a 36-month apprenticeship that develops mechanics instead of simply buying them, a seat at the table for the airport's expansion, and nearly fifty years privately held, answering to its own standards rather than a quarterly number, all of it a short drive from where I live in Canby. I want to do good work somewhere that operates like that. The fuller record is on the page about what HTS does right.
What the analysis turned up
The more impressed I became, the more one thing stood out: the information was difficult to come by. A company this capable should have been easy to research, and it wasn't. So I did what I would for any prospective client and ran a competitive analysis, the searches a customer or a potential customer would actually type. HTS's presence in those results was thin. The capability is enormous; the digital footprint that should carry it is not. The opportunity page walks through what that gap appears to be costing.
An intersection I couldn't look away from
My background sits at an unusual intersection: fire, emergency services, and digital marketing. Roughly fourteen years in the fire service, including wildland fire, the work behind HTS's suppression contracts. More than a decade marketing fire departments and recruiting volunteers, through firedepartment.net and for Nevada fire chiefs. About eighteen years in digital marketing overall.
When I saw a role that touched all of it at once, promoting heavy-lift fire and emergency capability, recruiting the people who do the work, and building the search and AI visibility to do both, the opportunity captivated me. The work HTS needs is the work I am best at, in the field I know best. That is a rare alignment, and it is worth reaching for.
About eighteen years in digital marketing, roughly fourteen in the fire service. View résumé (PDF).
Why I built something instead of sending a note
I'd reached out twice before in the usual way, and I understand why those notes didn't land. I pass on plenty of cold pitches myself. Rather than send a third, it seemed more useful to show the idea than to describe it, so I built a small working version you can click through instead of a list of claims. If the fit isn't right, it has cost you nothing. If it is, there's already something concrete to start from.
One caveat: in building the prototype I took some liberties expanding on HTS's services, and I won't have gotten everything right. I've deliberately kept the prototype itself unpublished, I won't put my rendition of HTS's own site online without HTS's say-so, though I'm glad to walk through it live anytime. The first real step would be reviewing every page with the people who actually know the operation. That correction pass is built into the plan.
Next step
If any of this resonates, the plan is short and concrete. See how the prototype would go from a draft to a live site, reviewed with your team first, within about 60 days.