>> For 40 years, Bobby Bailey has been bucking tradition.
Her talents for fixing things led her
first to her work on race cars.
Now she nurtures a multi-million dollar
air conditioning repair business
as CNS Cheryl Pots reports,
Bailey successes line, not so much in what she's done,
but how she's done it.
>> Bobby Bailey wouldn't be
happy if she couldn't keep her hands
on the working end of her $20 million-a-year industry.
>> Still think you need to change that socket.
>> Bailey is CEO of Our Way,
an Atlanta plant that remanufactures
air conditioners and refrigeration compressors.
Bailey's been in the industry for 40 years.
She began by repairing race car engines with her brother.
>> I got started when I was very young.
I'm really mechanically inclined.
My brother was very talented,
and I followed after him and became his shadow.
Bailey's mechanical bend led her to
a new industry in 1949, air conditioning repair.
As the industry grew,
she changed her focus from window units to compressors.
>> You have to move into other elements,
and that's what I've been able to do.
I've been able to look ahead and move into other areas.
>> The company currently does the bulk of rebuilding
for major companies such as Carrier and Copland.
Bailey is as unique in
the industry as the azaleas in her factory.
>> We're dealing in the world
of cast iron and sheet metal,
and it's not the type of thing that you would
expect perhaps a lady to be involved in.
>> Copland President, Dean Rue,
has been working with Bailey for 10 years.
>> She really does understand the business
just as thoroughly as
anyone that we have ever worked with.
>> If I go on the assembly line
and someone says they can't do that,
I say, well, let me show you.
She knows all the work. She knows about
everything that's in here, knows how to do it all.
She get right down where you do it.
>> Bailey says she's never failed.
Even in projects, she's taken on as hobbies.
In her spare time, she began her own record company,
produced a TV special featuring the platters,
and built beginner homes in a subdivision.
This summer, she'll join
an ongoing expedition to Greenland,
where a device she helped design and develop will allow
searchers to delve more than 200 feet under the ice,
and with luck, sit in
the cockpit of a World War II plane.
>> It's just the knowing that we've developed it,
that I had some part in designing it,
and my people developed it.
It's a payoff and we'll bring the planes up to.
>> That sense of adventure keeps
Bailey from ever considering retirement.
>> I'm looking to diversify and stay active.
If you would retire me probably I would end
up somewhere in a ward because I have too much energy.
>> Cheryl Potts, CNN, Atlanta.