We'll come back to another HVAC success secrets revealed with Thaddeus and Evan and on-purpose media. You're HVAC internet marketing experts. This week, Jeff Packard stops by the show. Jeff is the owner of one-stop heating and air in Utah, and they are on pace this year to do three and a half million dollars. Not too shabby for a business that only started in 2018, which has him and. He's grown to now a team of 15 and it hasn't always been easy for him.
They've went through a lot of struggles and trials and tribulations figuring out what kind of business they really wanted to run. And he's eternally grateful. He shared that with us on the show today and very fortunate to be where he is at now, but he is a man of his word. And I absolutely love watching his journey on social media.
He shares a lot about him and his family and hanging out with his beautiful daughter as well at both at the office on the road, in the truck, on the job sites and of course away from work as well. And that's really why he is in this business is to be able to provide a better life for him and his family. I love this episode with Jeff. I love this conversation with our good friend, Jeff Packard. I know you will as well.
So grab yourself a pen, a notepad, pour yourself a drink, sit back, relax, and please enjoy responsibly.
Welcome to HVAC success. Secrets reveal a show where we interview industry leaders and disrupters revealing the success secrets to create and unleash the ultimate HVAC business. Now your hosts fabulous.
Cheers, Jeff. Thanks for joining us. Thanks. Yeah, no worries. Welcome to the show, my friend.
Thank you guys for having me. I appreciate it.
No worries. And from what we've heard, your wealth of knowledge, I know you just told us before the show, you're an open book. So we look forward to diving in and hearing some of those top secrets that you've got. Let's do. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your story why you got into the business in the first place, and then that journey into being a business owner, because that's not everyone's aspiration, was that always something that really attracted you to the industry?
Yeah, no, it sounds good. I got into the industry. I think like most of us did by accident. I was young and I had a roommate that was doing. This kind of work. And I was kicking around doing odd jobs and he says, why don't you come work with me? And then the rest is history on that. As far as HVAC been doing it since March of 2000 didn't have aspirations of being an owner. When I was the top selling tech in the company I worked for 12 years.
I was doing pretty good and people, customers, but I would always ask me if it was my business or why don't you start your own business? And I would always say they treat me too good to have to worry about all that stress and stuff, being a business owner. But here I am. So
if you didn't want to be a business owner to begin with, what, what caused you to take the plan or the leap of faith to start your own.
Yeah, it wasn't necessarily that I didn't want to be a business owner. It was more that I was really comfortable in the position I was in with the company I was at. And I was, I had a lot of. A lot of leniency and I've got all the best opportunities. And so I could make two to 300,000 a year without isn't being a business owner. So I was pretty content and happy with that. And then the company I worked for started going downhill a little by little lot by a lot, actually.
And so I had to work harder and harder every year to make the same money. And it just got to the point that. I realized my opportunity there, my time there was limited and I had one or two options was to go to another company and do the same thing, which that didn't really sound appealing to me or go and start my own thing. And so I had a couple of people by my side and jumped out and decided to do this instead of go to work for the mannequin.
No, that makes a lot of sense. And it's funny. It was a conversation I had actually in the car ride to school this morning with my kids that nothing fails like success, right? When things are going well, that's when people get complacent, right? You've, we've all been to the restaurant where last year they made amazing food and the staff was exceptional and the service was exceptional.
Then you go back a year later and all of a sudden everyone's snooty and they don't have the time for you because they're just always busy. So they expect to always be that way. And then another year later, They're under, right? Yeah, nothing feels like success. So learning that lesson, then how have you applied some of the knowledge that you took from being an employee and working for the other company to now applying that in running your business? I
applied a lot of it really it's a, you learn the things of the things that work and the things not to do. The company I worked for I seen them. Give up on marketing. We had one of the best names in our market at that time. And they thought that we were branded enough that they could pull back on marketing and invest that money into. Outside of the company.
And I remember a couple, three, four or five summers ago, it was a hundred degrees and they were calling their phone to make sure it was ringing on like the most demand days. Oh yeah, it's ringing, it's working. And it's, I'm over there as a technician because I seen it. And I seen the marketing from the technical side. I seen the branding and they just completely dropped that off and thought that their brand alone could hold it. That's definitely not the case.
It happened quick overnight when they did that. A lot of that and they, the company I worked for was good tonight. I appreciate them and the experiences and the opportunities I had there. I had a better opportunity at that company than most people did because they were the type of company that would take a couple hours off of the installers paychecks, a skim, a little bit of commission off of the technicians. They were always doing that.
The only reason they wouldn't do it to me is because they knew I was on top of it to the point that I wouldn't let them get away with it. But. I learned that big time was treat your people right. To get your people stay. Versus they, they had a lot of turnover there.
That's really shitty to hear that companies are doing that. It happens across the board for variety of different industries, but it's still,
it sucks and it sucked to see it. I watched it from an outside cause I watched all my app and all my peers, but they was always the top producer there. So they knew really not to mess with me, so I didn't experience it, but I watched it and it was shitty.
Yup. Okay.
So taking that leap, you get into business for yourself. You've learned a couple of lessons you pick and chose and cherry pick some of the things that were great about that company and then some of the things that they were doing wrong. And giving up on marketing that's an easy lesson from that is they NWA and w used to be the number one producer of fast food restaurants across north America. They were almost out of business at the beginning of 1992.
They got down to 200 franchises across the U S I think it was a hundred and change. And they were considering rebranding themselves to, and w root beer and hot dogs because their number one producing restaurants were all in the middle of food courts. They got completely shut out by McDonald's came in, saw an opportunity, took over the model. Proper marketing, right? Again, nothing feels like success when you get complacent. So you came in, you've launched your business, you got started with it.
Now you've got a whole nother skill set that you've got to learn in terms of how to run a business while still being a technician, still making sales. But now you've got to do up the invoices. You got to collect the payments, you got to market yourself. What were some of the things that you did early on that really set the stage for where you're at?
We marketed we invested a lot in the marketing out the gate. I knew that we had to spend money to make money. So that was one of the things that, that we did good. As far as coming out, out the gate. The rest of it, man, I'm still learning. I'm still on the field. Not full time by no means. I've got some good service technician sales guys that are picking up that slack. And so I'm trying to stay in the field as. When it gets really busy, but the rest of the time I'm trying to train my guys.
And it's a battle. I thought when I started this in 18, that would be, that'd be easy. I got to figure it out. I can sell equipment to customers and it's easy, but it's done the business. Part of it has definitely been a challenge. Learning how to be a better leader is something that I'm not the best that I focus on trying to continue to get better.
But that's the biggest thing is as being a leader and being the person that 25 people want to work for, and they want to go put eight hours, 10 hours of work in.
I'm always reminded when you hear about, leader, there's four types of leaders, right? There's the person who who was in a leader and they're all in leaps, the leadership positions person, number one, they don't want to learn to be a leader and they don't have natural ability and the person has natural ability, but they don't want to learn. The other person has natural ability.
Plus they want to learn on the other person just wants to learn, but they don't have the natural ability in any room between there. And so you have to find where you're at to be able to adapt and get into that. And it's no, if you're saying, Hey, you want to be a better leader. It doesn't come naturally to you while you're falling into the category of don't have the natural ability, but you want to learn.
So what are some things that you've done in terms of a leadership perspective, to be able to learn how to become a better leader?
I would say being more patient my wife would laugh at this. Patience is my word is the thing that I have least I was with a customer yesterday and he told me, he says, you meet both. He says, I prayed to God to give me patience and I want it right now. So that's me. I wear my heart on my sleeve. If it's a stressful day and things are going bad, then people can see that on me. And so that's something that I've been focusing on more than anything is my body language.
I do feel like I'm a good leader and a natural leader. I've got to figure out those situations. I can lead everybody behind me and let's go and let's get it. And I'm the type of leader lead from the front, but it's the psychology part and make, keep people happy and understanding their needs and all that. That's the stuff that I need to keep, continue to work on.
It's one thing to be able to lead someone who's is that's easy to do. That's easy to communicate to see what I do and do that. And I'm going to lead you. It's a totally different thing. When you're trying to lead another type of person, another personality trait that doesn't respond to that type of leadership. So what sorts of things have you been doing to continue to learn and.
Hire the right people for the right positions and go well through my management team and try to stay out of situations that could cause that misunderstanding.
I love that.
You surround yourself with sorry. You surround yourself with the people that that bring you up, it's both good to great. What makes the, what separates the great companies from the good companies is in that's getting well, the leadership team, but B is getting the right people on the bus, in the right seats to be able to drive at home. For that, if you know that, Hey, I'm my strong suit is not in the office as the office manager of the gentleman and of operation school.
Then don't be in the office being yaasss Badger or being, the general manager of operations, remove yourself, hire somebody for that role. Who's better at it than you. Then you could have an even higher level of success
within your business, for sure. No, I believe that a hundred percent.
So what positions have you hired? Cause obviously in that first step and let's go back even to when you were first starting what were some of those first initial hires that you wanted to bring in first? And then, in terms of your management team what's that set up look like now?
Initially. When I started business, I wasn't planning on being a one man business and we didn't start out that way. We started, I started out with someone in the office and a couple installers. So the office is one of the most important things. The front line speaking to the customer says booking the call and setting the tone. It's huge. You guys know it, but it's. It can be the difference of a 40 50% book rate compared to a 70, 80% book gray, but it's not just the book rate.
It's the building that expectation when the customer calls in for us to go out and provide that quality five star service. So office is huge. That's always been a position that we focused on.
In the
freeze?
I am still here, so it's definitely not my internet connection this time. So it sounds like you did freeze, but now you talked about building the expectations of a client. Today from from another business, I think it was inside the service Avengers group. And he was talking about how this customer had this negative review after they, they were afraid and he's but the customer is like first off, the very first words out of his mouth were, man.
I had an amazing customer experience from the moment that I called you. And it was and they called a couple other people and he's just like that. That's what made me want to continue to do business with you because they set those expectations from the very beginning of that call when the, when they first had that first point of contact customer expectations. And how can you value that? Which is, I think a lot of people, how many times have you called the business?
And they go, oh, or they go, if they imagine they called them to say, one-stop. I know that you would cringe if your team did that, yeah.
Prince right now.
Yeah. I know what I said that what is your team doing? How can you monitor that process to make sure that you have that expectations built up from the very get-go to serving your customers? Because at the end of the day, you don't have anything without your customers and you also don't have anything with your people inside your office. You have to take care of them too.
I'm sorry, we lost you. Mid-thought there. Yeah,
I wasn't there for the first part of that question. I was gone, but
no Thaddeus was just bringing up a quote that he saw earlier this week, a post regarding expectations and having the right expectation of your dispatch team, your CSRs to make sure that they're answering the phone the right way. Setting the proper expectation for the customer experience, right? From that first phone call all the way through just
continued education, man, just keep going, keep learning, keep trying to get better at it. Like you said, complacency, you think you're good at it, but continued education and still learning and training and getting better at it.
Totally. One of the things that you said as you, you started that thought talking about your team and the business that you were right at the beginning was you have to know what kind of business you want to be. And you knew you didn't want to be just a one guy in a truck doing your thing. And I think that's something that is really overlooked. In the industry because there's a lot of pressure to perform and be a seven figure eight, figure nine, figure business, a to grow a big team.
But if that's not your makeup as a business owner, if that's not something that sits right with you, because you want to take vacations and go be with your family, and you've got young kids at home and you want to spend time with them, like you need to know. What it is that you really want out of this business, right from the Geco and decide on that first and have that be your filter for your decision making, moving forward. No,
I agree with you a hundred percent. And I came from a larger company and knew that I didn't want to go back to installing furnaces and air conditioners that's for damn sure. So I knew I needed people behind me. Definitely. I get it. There's a lot of people and I've got a lot of friends and people that worked for themselves or have one or two employees. And they definitely got a lot more freedoms and probably not as much stress, but at the same time.
They own a job rather than business and a company. So my goal is to keep growing this. We're growing from last year to this year and we're gonna continue to grow and then we want to keep getting different. I
love it. There's people that you said they buy a job, right? There's what 125,000 heating and plumbing businesses in the United States, 25% of which are over a million dollars in revenue. So there's a lot of smaller businesses out there where they buy their job and Hey, that's you cool? If. Cool. Not everybody wants to be, the victors in the issues in having no 50, $60 million per year businesses or the ghettos or the, the Anthony Premera is a hundred million dollar per year businesses.
That's what people glamorize, but there's a lot of people like you that are in the trenches who are building their business at $3.5 million per year who want to continue to grow and in how success in turn, how you measure your success is entirely up to you.
Yeah, it needs to be an internal thing. One of the other things you said is you invested into marketing. And so we had one question that came in here from Alvin Reyes asking what was your daily ad spend? And then what ad platforms did you utilize? So I guess in the beginning, and then even now, you don't have to get into budgets now, if you don't want to, but what were some of the things that you did invest in, in terms of marketing to get your name out there?
Branding, as far as the vehicles is big, getting the brand out there and getting the name out there. When we first started, we did a couple of home shows and stuff like that, just to get out there in the community. But the biggest thing from day one until now is as Google. Getting the right company and getting the right SEO and PPC going and getting the phone ring. And so that's always been, our biggest focus has been Google local service ads, which is also Google as that.
Been an awesome platform. And when we started, I think we, we jumped on pretty new into the platform. So we've always been ranked good and show. Good. So we do Google a hundred percent and we do some mailers as well to get out. We were in a magazine that we've done from conception until now. It's called the hometown values magazine, but we get good return on that. And besides that. It's Google and that mailers magazines, if we do have you
noticed a question for you on the marketing component of the things from when you started? You mean if Google has been a big thing for you from the very get-go, have you noticed a, your conversions or your ad spends becoming better? The more that you've had your brand. Yeah,
for sure. The reports we get we're teamed up with rhino and the reports we get from rhino. They're pretty detailed. So we're definitely spending less per ads now than we were a couple of years ago. Now that we're branded.
And that's a key takeaway for a a lot of people that are listening to this. If you're brand new and you want to dominate the market, it's going to take some time to build up that authority with branding. Branding is the biggest thing that you can do to help your online conversion work. Like we, Evan, and I know this before we were in print magazines but a lot of people didn't have the internet marketing down to be able to help capture the branding efforts that they were putting forward.
So it was essentially wasted spend at that point in time. So it's a, it's the new thing to be able to now when people see that, and that's actually a common theme that we hear and we see a lot, on our show is that people that have a great brand have a great community feel or out in present in the marketplace have better results for their online. So walk us through one stop heating and air conditioning.
It's a fairly unique in terms of the coloring, walk us through the decision to wrap your vehicles, how you wrap them, the brand that you have and everything that goes into it.
Okay. I'd say Google again. Everyone goes to Google, right? And so decided to start the business. Didn't have an idea on color branding, company name. Just knew that we wanted to start an HVAC business. So I literally Googled a good company name, HVAC company names, and one-stop was on that list. And I liked the sounds of it. And. It was pretty easy from there. Just check DAPL to make sure that it wasn't being used. And it was like one stop is the one. So we went with that pretty quick.
And it was pretty quick and easy to pick. When I started this, it was before I was on Facebook and networking with all these people in the HVC industry. So I didn't know about Dan and Nellie or none of those guys. So I went on a website. My father-in-law's guidance, it's called 99 design, which is just a logo building website. And it was really cool because there's different steps you can do to get people to, to compete and try to get your business designers and people do that.
So in that couple weeks that we were doing that, I probably got. Three or four or 500 different designs to choose from and was able to really form it. So it started as something different. We almost went with the stop sign design because of the one-stop name. But but I just liked this design and the colors. It's funny. I'm a football fan sports fan. Denver Broncos is my team, even though they're not doing too well right now, but that's where the colors came from, was from my.
Nice and simple, right? There a lot of guys, over-complicate it. And I'm not talking the experts within the space, I'm just talking businesses. It's simple and it's clean sometimes, probably we were chatting beforehand, there's different ways to have the branding impressions on there. And I love what Dan and Ellie does, but it's not a fit for every single person out there for their business. Like you look at, we were talking about our local HVAC revealed.
It's really just a stamp for the HVAC words. One-stop simple, clean, but here's the thing that you have in common with, our brand beats, the blue clean, the colors, make it pop. And it's memorable behind that. So look, you can have that simplicity, just make sure that it's memorable. Random question.
Yeah, let's do it before, while you're pulling that up though. You mentioned Chris and rhino, so I thought I'd give him a quick shout out here too, but there you go. JP, my band. He's got a great story and he's on a rocket ship. So there you go. Little compliment for Chris.
Yeah.
All right. Random question. A favorite time of the show where we pull out a random question from the interwebs that our guests has no clue what it is. So we're gonna put you on the spot for. What's the last book you gave up on and stopped reading.
I'd have to look in my library was I did start a book just that I need to get back on.
That's funny when I read that question, when I haven't put it in at the beginning of our show for us in our notes I looked, I was both to say every book that's behind me up here,
And I'll probably have some people, cause I heard this, I think on your guys' podcasts when you guys were interviewing she said, I don't know why. I can't think of his name. Garage door, Tommy Mello. You guys were in. Did you guys
have taught me about no, I haven't had Tommy. We out one of his good friends. Yeah.
It was, maybe it was Tommy's podcast, but he recommended this book selling to hallmark. Okay. And I started and I haven't finished that books and you gave up
on it. I
gave up, pick it up and go back to, I get me, have to go back to it because it is good. I just,
yeah. Me personally, I don't finish books. Yeah. And I don't even read them cover to cover. Like I go straight. First page I read is the table. And I pick and choose my chapters that I want to get into. And then I go to the middle of that chapter and I start reading there, right? There's too many good books with great information out there to sit there and read a book, cover to cover. I don't need a story. Give me the Cole's notes and it's onto the next one.
And let's see how we can actually apply it. That's the big thing, right? If you're not applying the knowledge you're pulling from a book, then what's the point. You're just wasting it.
That's why I like I have something called the Blinkist. And I think actually Roland for me, housecall pro when he was on, he has that as well or a different app that it's literally just the summering. It's 15 minutes, 20 minute Coles notes of a book in it's great. And it's good when you don't want to, when you want to not read news or anything related to, your work, it's completely in mindset on random. So I get a random free, whatever.
That comes through and I read it and he gets some interesting shit sometimes that you learn that sometimes you're like, what did I just read that joke there? What are the things I want to go back to the part of you being in. And so you're in the field, you're in the office, you're trying to balance it all. How do you go about managing a business where, and running it while you're still being out there and doing those things, it's a delicate balancing act. So you, what do you do?
How do you make it
work? It is delicate. I like to try to spend most of the time I can in the office, even though it's hard for me, because I've never been an office employee. I get here. I started thinking like, I gotta get outta here. I gotta go help somebody out. I got to go out and meet with some customers, but it's imbalanced the more I'm growing my service department, the less I'm in the field I want to, my goal is to focus and train.
I've got a couple of really strong service techs and my goal is to focus and train the new ones in and get them going up. The one or two that I've got that are really pulling their weight. They're there for me to get out of the field because that's the biggest thing. If I get out of the field before the numbers go down and so I gotta be in the field to keep the numbers up, but now it's just more, the time I spend in the field, I want to be training while I'm in the field.
I enjoy being in the field. And I don't know if I'll ever a hundred percent be out of the field. I enjoy the customers and. And traveling around the valley and doing all that. But the more, the better my service tech team gets the less I'm in the field.
Yup. A hundred percent. So with that then, cause you, one of the things you mentioned was that your super power is connecting with customers. So what are some things that you feel like you do better than anyone and how you build rapport and really connect with a customer? So that they're not just they're there for a one-time transaction, but they turn into a customer for life.
You said it already poor man. People buy from who they like, and it's just being personable. I love people. And so it's not hard for me to go out and meet people. And that's the most enjoyable part of my job. That's the, when I pull up to the job to the customer's house, I don't have any stress because I'm comfortable with that. And. And that's what I'm trying to train into my younger technicians. They go to the house and they're like, where's the thermostat?
And I'm like, no, sit there and talk to them. If they want to talk about their dog for 10 minutes, sit there and talk about their dog. And I'm just good at that. I'm natural. I'm a people person and I can communicate and talk with a lot of people. So I go in there and just get them to like me before I even think about their equipment. And by that time if you're not pushing on them, you're really just building rapport.
By the time you go look at the equipment, get done diagnosed, and they already know they're doing business with you. They already trust you. So it makes that business transaction a lot more profitable, a lot more successful, but it's just about the people and just being personable and just being friendly and getting them to like you. And I guess I'm a likable guy,
but it works. That's the thing like you, you just, you have a conversation, you hear, and you've said you said the words like, and you said the words trust in, in there. And so we talked a little bit about on the marketing side of things. No, No light trust, no life trust like ad nauseum. And so if they know you, they're calling you because they've seen you in around the marketplace. So they already have that initial part of knowing you.
Now you have to get them to like you, but you also have to get them to trust you. How many times have we heard in sales? Hey, I really like. But, you went with somebody else's because you didn't establish the trust. How do you get trust? Have a fucking conversation with people like it's that simple? Just yeah, people don't know how much they what's. The, what's the saying that they don't know how
much
They don't care about how much, until you know how much they care. You care, something like that. I'm only a whiskey and a half deep too. While I still can't read this 1.75 liter bottle. Yeah,
I was going to say, you should smell off your bottle for the people watching.
I drank the neck off of it, so it's
a 1.7, five liters from Costco the other day. So I figured I would give her a go.
So let me ask you this, Jeff, how do you train that into people? Because I know for a lot of business owners, that's one of the hard parts again, is like, how do I train someone to something that comes natural to.
It's difficult. It is difficult. It's repetition and picking the right personalities to be the right, like you said, the right people on the bus, but the right people in the right seats. And I've had people in service. That are great employees, but I felt them by them being in service because they weren't great at communicating with customers. And so it's difficult trying to pick people that already have that personality, I think is the biggest.
Conclusion to that, because if you don't, you could train that and beat that until you're red in the face and they might not get it because they just not comfortable talking to people.
Makes sense. Do you do any sort of like personality tests, like the Colby assessment or the Clifton strengths, then like the Gallup at all in order to be able to determine a person's personality, see if they would be a good fit for their, or do you do any playing with them? How do you generally go with.
We've done some personality tests before and hiring for sure. And that's something that I enjoy doing because it, it does tell a lot about you. A lot of it's to say you have the conversation with them and you can tell mostly in the interview or meeting the person that they're, whether they're outgoing, whether they're personable. A lot of people are closed off and you can pretty much tell, so person reading them personally as well as the personality test and asking the right question.
Makes sense. Keep it simple. Stupid, right? Yeah. In the interview, just on the, you got to check boxes, right? Installer or service tackle.
I have somebody that you think is an installer or a certain state. And by the time you're done with that interview, you're like, no, please go into the installer department.
Oh, it's sometimes you're like, look, you could get it wrong in the interview too. There's and it's, but it's also having that process in place to say, okay, is there a checks in there to be able to make sure that they're in the right. And that happens, hire slow fire fast is a thing that I've always heard. I You don't necessarily fire fast. It's the analogy of here.
You could move people around too, especially in a time where it's, it looks, some guys are having troubles recruiting guys in, so don't necessarily fire the person. If they're shitty tech, try them on an install. If they're shitty and instill Trev on a service, bounce them around, remove them, see if there's a fit somewhere. Don't go straight to the accident. I was going to say Trump. But I was also going to, with the apprentices that you're fired careful from us Canadians talking about
presidents. No,
you still follow it just for the entertainment, but we've got our own joke. We've got our own, we've
got our own things like, a nice hair.
Yeah, exactly. I'm curious, is there anything that you have hired out and brought in terms of investing in your team for training and development of them to help improve some of their skills for whether that's technical skills, whether that's people skills and communication skills or anything.
And I think my employees will say I'm constantly training on that or investing into that. So a couple of my technicians have been in one, just got back a few weeks ago from the ultimate tech academy down in Arkansas. And that's been really good they've they both really enjoyed it and came back a different technician. And then I've spent a lot of. Joke or Sarah spent a lot of investment and time into Joe for Sarah and training. I've worked with Joe. I met Joe back in 2014.
When I was enrolled into his training at the company I worked for prior. So I've known Joe Long before starting the business. You said it's training a lot of used Victor's training vectors real aggressive and out in same kind of. He's, he really cares about the people and he's good at training. So I've used, and I've got a guy going down there, so it just depends on what you're looking for. Like the technical stuff.
He does that as well, but like I've done the ultimate technical academy for that. And the sales training go to Victor for a lot of sales training and Joe for.
Love it had some big names in there too, but here's the key word, right? Stacy. So Joe Love my Joe also love Victor too. So
another business owner that crushes it in terms of investing in her team, and Denise
Stacy. So I'm taking my wife is going out with me to, to Victor's event and October. And I'm excited to, to meet Stacy and her husband. So no.
Cool. You can go shake everyone's hand in
person too. He'll be there, but
here's the key word you use the word invest. And I even talked about it in marketing too. You said, use the word invest. You didn't use it as a cost. You use it as an investment, because. Pays you something in return, right? You might not see it right away, but if your texts, your you're, if you're texting you and you're selling texts, they can get better. They can close that one extra job. They can add that extra little bit to your average ticket.
Now you've recouped that as an investment, right? Because they've gotten better at what they do, and it only serves them. And when you keep them when you do training and you keep investing and you keep those things fresh, Your team is going to want to stay with you a lot longer, you hear it. There's I cannot keep guys around in my business. Okay. What are you doing to invest back into. Nothing. Okay. Invest it to them, train them, keep them happy, keep them learning.
That's the thing is okay, we may joke, and I joke that I don't read books. Very often I might listen to a lot of books. I listened to a lot more than I read, but. Humans like people we want to learn, we're wired to learn things. So you have to constantly give them things to learn in different ways and different contents. So I'm glad that you have that as part of your business. So
thank you. You're welcome. So
let's flip the script here a little bit and. Look at some of the struggles that you went through. Cause it hasn't always been this smooth sailing, easy road to where you're at now. Yes.
Let's move selling and
no, but that's the picture that a lot of people would paint in their minds. It's oh, you started in 2018. Started the business, it's now 2021 and you're already at three and a half million and a staff of 15 people like, gosh, like everything just must be going. It must be so easy. He doesn't know the struggles that I've been through. So let's pull back the curtain here a little bit and take a peek at what it is that you went through.
What lessons did you have to learn along the way to get to where you're at?
I tell people growing a business or starting a business is like aging and dog years. Every year is equivalent to seven where, when you're starting a business just the people, man. That's the biggest thing is finding the right people. And investing into the end of the employees here to grow the business. It hasn't always been easy. Like I said, I can go out in the field and sell one or two or 3 million, but I might not have any employees that want to work for me.
And that's been, the learning part is just investing into the employees and caring about. What they want and trying to help them get to their personal goals, which in turn helps me get to my company and personal bills. So that's the biggest thing. And it's been, it hasn't been easy for sure. We've been successful. We've been able to to get some revenue in, but it doesn't always mean that we've got the best profit in and it doesn't mean that we've always done the best job. It's stressful, man.
I had a, my dentist asked me, he's is it slow right now? He's are you stressed about that? And I said, I'm stressed. Whether it's busy, I'm stressed that it's busy, I'm stressed. That it's slow. It's tough. And just the people is the biggest thing. The people is what's going to keep the company going. So investing in trying to keep the people in and keep their goals in mind and keep them moving the company.
It makes a lot of sense. When people only see at the end of the day, they see the good things, and let's be honest here. People don't post about the shitty stuff that happens in their day on social media. Then they're not going to, because it, they want the good things because they want to have this allure that everything is going along right. And positive in their life. But building a business success, it's like an iceberg target. It's hard. It's hard as fuck to build a business.
But again, people only see that, for us works, most people are like, oh, you're home. It's easy. No, it's actually not. It's probably more difficult to work from home than it is going to an office. People only see, especially when you have a screaming three and a half month old at home, and you can just put on these guys and turn on like complete noise blocking in order to be able to work. But They see the iceberg, right?
They see the 10% of the success where there's 90% on the bottom that people don't see that people don't talk about. So if you were to go back in time to a short, three years ago, to tell yourself one to three things, I'll give you, I'll give you an out there on versus saying three things, but one to three things that you would tell your past self, something that would have accelerated in major life, easier as a business owner.
Being more patient is the first thing that would make my life better as a business owner. Shit. I don't know, man. That's a tough one. I'm not good with on the spot questions guys. All good.
I know my dad always says a bad dad joke here is if I want wanted more patients that would have been.
So let's well, let's unpack patients, is that patients within like results and expectations of the business is that patients with people, like what where does that come up?
Probably patients with people in the processes, more than anything, the results, there's the results. It's hard to be patient with that too, but we've seen we've seen decent results. Not what we want to see. We want to, we always want to be better, but. Patients with. Internally with myself, with people and body language like said, nah, not being frustrated. Let my peace, because I was telling one of my top sales guy that he's a real, a really top producer. I told him I was like, me and you.
Make this company go up or down just by our body language alone. If we come in grumpy and with our head down, like the whole company starts to follow that and they're like, what's wrong? What's going on? That's been one of the biggest things I've learned is I'm not. I've got 15 people that I'm focusing on.
It's not just my day to day struggles and my data where it is because that's I just need to go sell some jobs, need to get some installs on the board that, that part of it's easy to handle and to deal with. But the 15 people is the thing. I've been through some people because I've been learning that. So my first two years of business the turnover rate was a lot higher than I wanted to be. The last year of business, I've been able to get a lot better leadership team.
That's what I didn't have the first couple of years. So there you go. I just found my answer was I would have created that leadership team sooner.
And that goes back to what we were chatting about earlier. It's not your, it's not your biggest strength. So hire somebody to fill that in, it's like, why would you be your own bookkeeper? Why would you be your own counted, hire somebody that can be able to fulfill that role for you, if they're better than you at it.
I also love, I just gotta throw this up here because I laughed and I was trying to keep it in, but you almost really have to be a bit insane to do this gig because it's Hardy as shitty. Fuck, fuck. Ha. That's a real level of heart, by the way, that's what that's real talk, right? Like it is, that is straight real talk, we've obviously opened up, the Kurds are talking about the struggles behind it and it's a big thing, right?
The sleepless nights as a business owner that you have that nobody else. You said you tried to go back and you're thinking about your business.
Yeah. Waking up early, not being able to go back to sleep now and thinking about it like that. It's probably not. That's probably a big part to do with the turnover rate within companies is the emotional, the stressful part of it that, that burden of people not being able to succeed versus the business part of it, because the business part. Isn't the hardest part of it going out and selling a furnace and installing a furnace. That's easy.
Oh, a hundred percent. That's what you've been doing for 20 years. Yep. You are learning an entirely different skillset that is completely separate from being a technician. Yes, sir. So
Let's chat a little bit about you. The stress is a part of things and I, I really don't think people talk about this enough. What are some ways like, you know what one can say alcohol, it's not a coping mechanism. But people say I go home, I have a glass of red wine. Not necessarily the best way to cope with it.
That's sure that's temporarily something that, might help you get away from an all, but what are some things that you've done in terms of some of the stress that have helped you cope with the stresses of running a business,
Balance, you got to learn balance, even though business can start in business can be, can take a lot of time and focus. You still gotta be able to separate yourself from that. Vacations to hanging out with my family my wife and my kids that's it right there. Family helps level that.
And I still love that. And I love that you said the vacation part, I heard somewhere that it's like half of people in, around there don't utilize all of their vacation time in a year. And that's us and Canada, by the way. It's not just a, it's not just a us thing. It's a Canadian thing where you look at places like Europe, for example I had a buddy that wouldn't work. He was in working in Dubai and they're like, yeah, here you go. If you start with six weeks vacation no probation period.
No. Take it all, you literally have to take it all. France has mandated that you can't check email, work, email past a certain time, or you risk being fined. Like it's look at them, but the serious. And they actually have a really good quality life as a result of being able to disconnect and have that balance to be able to get away from an all, especially in a conductor, in a connected world. Great thoughts on that is to be able to okay. Take time away from the business.
Take time to disconnect, get away from it all. If it's a Saturday or Sunday, turn your phone off. Some of the best things you can do is turn your phone off for 24 hours. Some people are like, oh, they real live without it, do it right. Don't check your phone and everything. Like I have an app on my phone that disables my notifications from 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM. For certain things.
So text messages will still come through, but like all the Facebook shit, I don't even have emails on there and it really helps somebody to be able to help compartmentalize and take those mental breaks, which is a big thing. It's not all the time.
That's a smart idea to just turn them off.
Yeah. And it's funny. I was listening to a podcast this morning. It was Greg McAfee who we've had on the show before as well. And another $50 million business owner, but. He was talking about on his show about a buddy of his, that was running a business and he would always ask him, how are things going? How are you doing? And every time you'd ask him, I was fantastic. Things are going so great. It's so amazing. He's I knew he was full of shit. Greg's been in business for gosh, 30 years now.
It's been a long time that he's been doing it. And for him, he knows you can't bullshit it. I guy, that's been in business that long. That shit's going to go wrong sometimes. And it can't always be great. And it's the business owners that will never open up and talk about the struggles and the stresses when they're going through them. That just keep burying that shit down and burying that shut down. And they don't talk about it with especially guys like you that have been there.
And they've done that before. Being able to open up and say like, how do I get through this? Let's take a shortcut here and not have to figure everything out myself. Like you've done, you've hired Joe. And you brought him in to help your team to overcome some shortcomings with working with the team. You've hired the right people. You brought in marketers, you brought in trainers to, to be able to shortcut your success. If someone was wanting to get ahold of you best places to do that
would be a Jeff at one-stop utah.com.
So we both put up at the same time, Evan and I were like telepathically reading each other's mind because I was about to segue into the exact same thing that he's talking about. So I'll just lock in,
One stop Utah, make sure you hit them up there. So if you do have any questions for him, How he runs his business things that he does make sure you reach out to him there one-stop utah.com is the website. If you want to peek in on that and see what he's doing well, steal from the best deal, from the best with pride, as long as you're not in the same market.
Yup.
To wrap it up, we do have one final question for you and I guarantee you, this one will leave you thinking for a little bit, because you seem to not know how to answer some questions right on the spot, but Hey, that's all right. What's one question that you wish people would ask you more, but they don't.
Yeah. I don't know.
We're going to practice our sales skills and sit here really quietly until you come up with an answer. It's fuck these Canadians.
Sorry. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question.
What is, let me ask you this. Let me rephrase it in a different way then. What is a top. That doesn't get discussed enough that you feel like you are really great at and really have a strong knowledge base to answer
customer service. But that gets discussed enough. I don't know. I don't, I actually,
I would think that it doesn't get discussed.
It's the thing that everyone says they're great at and they care about, but they don't do anything different or unique to really,
I think that a lot of people hold different standards. So we, all, the customer service is a very high standard. So it's like a normal thing that we try to provide five star customer service, but then you call and you can't even get somebody else to answer the phone. I fear trying to call a contractor. So yeah. We always make the comment to our customers that we're a customer service company that just happens to do HVAC. So customer service focusing on customers,
it's almost like a Simon Sinek start with Y type quote right there.
So what is something that you've implemented within your business to hold that high standard of exceptional customer service?
Training and accountability and terminal with customer service. We're listening to our CSRs calls and constantly training and trying to help them improve on their customer service skills. And then weekly meetings with our service techs and our installers and customer service is always one of the main topics we talk about every day.
I love it. That's your reputation, so I love it. Awesome. Thank you so much, Jeff, for for joining us on the show today, we really appreciate insights. We appreciate the secrets you had to share and until next time. Cheers.
Thank you. Cheers.
Wow. What a great episode with Jeff Packard, Jeff, thank you so much for stopping by the show today. Dropping some notes. And spreading value with all of the community. Appreciate you, my friend. Thank you so much. Some of my big nuggets from this episode first and foremost, success is not linear. This is a journey that has ups and downs, peaks and valleys left. You're all over the place.
Sometimes it's a roller coaster being an entrepreneur, and you've got your highs and lows through multiple times of the day. It feels but, Jeff really stuck with it and he's by no means there yet. He's still building, he's still growing. He's got some really big plans, but that journey of being a technician and turning into a business owner and learning an entirely different skillset is incredibly impactful.
And to recognize the challenge within that and that you don't have to know all the answers. And realize that there is so many amazing communities and so much knowledge in our industry to be able to reach out to people, connect with people. It's a powerful thing. So I definitely commend Jeff for that. Also I think into connecting with.
And that being something that is his super power, which is really powerful and amazing, and being able to now step into a role as a business owner, where you're not just being able to connect with customers really well, but you're also able to connect with your team really well and then train them to be able to connect with customers really well. It's a learned skill. It's something that with time and with practice and with intention, you can get better at it.
It's not something that you're just born with. It is practiced daily and you need to be intentional about it. So I really commend him for that. Thank you so much, Jeff, for joining us today and spreading some knowledge, my friend, but I want to hear from all of you, the listeners, what were some of your nuggets from this week? Hit us up in email info at on-purpose media.ca. And of course in our Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/h vac revealed.
If you're not joining the live streams, you're missing. We went live with Jeff today. We go live every Wednesday at 2:00 PM. Mountain standard time, 1:00 PM Pacific 3:00 PM, central 4:00 PM Eastern. And if you're in any other part of the world, do the conversion. But we go live in our Facebook group on YouTube Facebook profiles. We try to do it as many places as possible to make it easy for you to be able to consume this content and interact with us.
Cause in the live streams, you can ask questions of the guests. You can interact with us with the guests and it makes the show a lot more fun. And we make sure that we answer the questions that are on your mind and you get the answers that you need to help move your business forward. So definitely check out the live streams. If you're not doing that. Also, if you can do us one favor.
If you got any information, any golden nuggets from this episode that are going to help you move your business forward, could you do us a favor and introduce this show to one other person? It would mean the world to us because our goal as in running this show is to have the biggest impact possible within the industry. And the only way we can do that is with your help.
If you can do that, it would mean the world to us, and it would help out another business owner to help them unlock the success secrets behind the ultimate HVAC business. Thanks for joining us this week, tune in next week for another episode of HVAC success, secrets revealed. And until next time, cheers.