A family-run business in Silverdale is breaking industry norms, empowering women, and redefining success in a traditionally male-dominated trade.
PHOTOS BY LEAH THOMPSON/SCANDIA STUDIO
By QUINN PROPST
Ward Media Staff Reporter
At the time, Guy looked at the way the world was going and worried about what opportunities his daughters would have.
“Being a tradesperson, I’ve never been on unemployment in 30 years, pretty much,” he said. “I took two months off and had unemployment for that time. But that was voluntary. I just took a break.”
“I thought they could have that too, where they don’t have to worry about governments doing crazy things,” he said. “People will always want to be warm when they get home.”
“It’s like healthcare,” he said. “It’s not going away. Everybody’s still gonna need it. So that was why I thought it was a good thing.”
His daughters Morgan and Zoe were 13 and 14 when he started the business in 2014. Originally, the girls sold filters with Guy at kiosks in the mall and, for a while, went door to door with their filters in a cart they pulled along.
But now Morgan and Zoe have far surpassed selling filters. Now, they are women and highly skilled in their field.
Zoe is a licensed journeyman electrician and is now the CEO of Filter Girls. Morgan is currently studying for her electrical administrator license.
HVAC remains a male-dominated field, and customers are often surprised to see Zoe arrive for a job. Many assume she and Morgan are too young or inexperienced.
“Most of the time, if it’s like, me and dad will go out and we’ll, go diagnose someone’s heater, and then I come back, just me with the part, and they look at me and they’re like, where’s Guy? ‘Just me today. Just me. I have the part. I’m ready to install it.’ And they’re like, you’re gonna do that? Yeah, and I just have to be super nice, and I have to smile,” Zoe said.
Zoe and Morgan do not deal with rude customers. That is one of the rules Guy established with the company.
“We don’t deal with rude customers,” she said. “If you’re mean, I won’t be mean back to you. I will just simply say, have a wonderful day. I will pack up my things and I will leave nicely. But if you’re mean, I will not be staying.”
Her advice for other women in male-dominated fields is to keep an open mind.
“Keep an open mind with your customers, because most of them will be judgmental at first,” she said. “Some of my best customers right now that I really like, they’re my clients. They, at first had no idea why I was at their house.”
“But now they’re honestly my biggest clients, and I really like them, and we have a great relationship, and they’re the best tippers,” she said.
Morgan echoed that sentiment, encouraging women to push past the negativity.
“Don’t let the men in this field discourage you from anything,” Morgan said. “I mean, they can sit there and talk a lot of big stuff about, you know, you’re girl, you can’t lift this, or, you know, you’re too pretty to be here. You should be sitting at a desk, and, you know, a lot of things like that.”
“Just don’t let them get to you, because, I mean, you’re gonna show up and go to work and do your job probably better than those men are, you know, so just don’t let it get to you,” she said.
The Littlefields are a blended family, and open communication has always been key.
“We’re pretty open, but we’ve always been, because of our family dynamic,” Guy said. “It was her daughter, my daughter, our adopted daughter, our son. But everybody gets treated exactly the same.”
Unlike many father-son businesses in the industry, where tensions run high, the Littlefields prioritize calm and professional communication.
“We’re a service provider trade, so we’re not very emotional,” Guy said. “You have to be very relaxed and calm all the time. You have to seem like you aren’t worried—yes, even if it’s a worrisome thing.”
“These two do a great job of being calm on the outside for the most part, because people worry when they have gas leaks and have these things and it is dangerous,” Guy said.
“But we’re educated,” he said. “We spend a lot of time self educating.”
Education is a cornerstone of Filter Girls’ success. Every Friday is dedicated to learning—whether it’s self-education, state-mandated coursework, or hands-on training.
Guy involved his children in the business when they were young, teaching them and letting them experience the job.
“We all had to go and work at least once on a job site, and we all went under a house or in an attic to see if we would like it,” Zoe said.
Morgan, who prefers to avoid crawlspaces, found her niche on the business and electrical side. She excels at scheduling, customer service, and understanding the technical side of repairs.
Before Morgan joined full-time, the business relied on customers to book their own appointments online—something that worked well for younger clients but left others wanting a personal touch.
“The younger generations don’t want to call me,” Guy said. “They want to do it at midnight from their phone and just book the appointment. So we really took the time to make appointments (accessible).”
“The rest of them are really glad that Morgan is there to talk to them as a human because I think that matters, too,” he said.
Filter Girls is classified as a specialty construction contractor rather than a general contractor or dedicated HVAC contractor. This designation allows them to focus on HVAC and refrigeration while also hiring specialists like electricians or tile installers as needed—one at a time—rather than managing large teams.
Because electricians are hard to find but essential to their work they plan to hire an electrician as soon as Morgan is finished with her studies and passes her state exams.
“Then Morgan will be in charge of saying he worked this many hours, he gets this much credit on his electrical license,” Guy said. “Zoe worked with him that day. She gets X amount of credit on her electrical license. I’m not really boosting any of my licenses. I’m on the other path, the path out, right?”
Through the years, Filter Girls has evolved to include more services to meet area service demands.
“I never thought we would fix fireplaces or anything other than heat pumps,” he said.
But there are not many businesses that fix fireplaces in the area. There is one service person who is constantly booked out six months who recommends Filter Girls all the time, Guy said.
“So we fixed some fireplaces, and then we fixed hundreds of 1000s of fireplaces and we don’t even have a brand, like we’re brandless when it comes to fireplaces.
“So that evolved, and then it was the generators and things,” he said. “Zoe and I went to generator school, just to improve our electric knowledge, not really to sell generators, and then we had said it out loud by accident. And then the next thing you know, we’re going around doing maintenance on generators.”
As a kid, Morgan enjoyed learning the paperwork side of the business.
“I’d sit with my dad for hours and learn to do paperwork, because at that point it was all physical paper,” she said. “So just kind of learning, like how to run the business on that side.”
Morgan excels at that side of running a business. However, Zoe is not a fan of paperwork. She prefers to be outside and working with her hands.
“I just want to get out in the field,” she said. “I’ve always been outside. I don’t want to be inside. I don’t want to do paperwork. I was always outside with dad in the garage, sort of building like this go kart or whatever. We build something cool, and it’s just now I just want to do that.
“We build a lot of things for fun,” Guy said. “We built an arcade last summer.”
When the girls were young Guy involved them in many different projects. They renovated a school bus, built Go Karts and learned many hands-on skills. Even now that the girls are adults they often craft, build and gather as a family.
Family time and quality of life are important things to the Littlefield family so they structured their business to honor those aspects. They do not do emergency calls like other bigger companies with more staff. And unlike many others in their field they do have plans for retirement.
The industry is small and tightly knit, with limited supply stores where everyone—competitors, apprentices, and seasoned workers—cross paths daily. Many workers stay in the trade for decades, often until their 80s, because there aren’t enough new people to replace them.
But Guy feels good about retiring since he has two successors to take his place.
When Guy retires Zoe and Morgan plan to continue building the company with their vision.
“If we have children and we want our children to do it, and if our children want to do it, yeah, we can incorporate them,” Zoe said. “If they don’t want to, and we want to hire outside people, we can also do that. Or if we’re just tired of it, we can all come together and we can just sell the company.”
“Eventually, maybe we’ll sell our company away and retire somewhere,” Guy said. “We’ve already gotten offers, but we don’t want to sell yet. It’s our way of life, not just our company.”
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