← Earn Your Leisure
Earn Your Leisure
How To Build A Six-Figure HVAC Business With No Experience (Step-by-Step Blueprint) 🚨
01:38:42
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- [00:00]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Dell PCs with Intel inside are built
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Vincent Taylor
for the moments that matter.
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iHeart Podcast Announcer
Built for the busy days that turn into all night study sessions.
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Vincent Taylor
The moment you're working from a cafe
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iHeart Podcast Announcer
and realize every outlet's taken. Yeah, the times you're deep in your flow and the absolute last thing you need is an auto update throwing off your momentum. That's why Dell builds tech that adapts to the way you actually work.
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Vincent Taylor
Built with a long lasting battery so
- [00:28]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
you're not scrambling for the closest outlet. And built in intelligence that makes updates around your schedule, not in the middle of it. Find technology built for the way you work@dell.com DellPCs built for you
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Rashad
earners what's up? Look, if you've been sitting on a business idea, a side hustle, or a brand you wanted to launch, this is your sign to finally make it happen. Wix Harmony lets you create an entire website just by telling it what you want. Literally. You type it and it builds a site for you with business features already included. And the best part, you still have full control to edit everything yourself. It's fast, it's smart, and it makes building a website way easier than people think. Try it today@wix.com harmony that's wix.com harmony.
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Vincent Taylor
Want to get more work done with less effort?
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iHeart Podcast Announcer
On TikTok creators are sharing AI automation
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Rashad
tips that save time and deliver better results.
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Vincent Taylor
Tap to discover.
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iHeart Podcast Announcer
Try TikTok now.
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Vincent Taylor
The thing about AI for business, it
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Rashad
may not automatically fit the way your business works.
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Vincent Taylor
At IBM we've seen this firsthand. But by embedding AI across hr, IT and procurement processes, we've reduced costs by millions, slashed repetitive tasks and freed thousands of hours for strategic work.
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Rashad
Now we're helping companies get smarter by
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Vincent Taylor
putting AI where it actually pays off. Deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM I made 3000 clear without doing any work. This trade will make you catch up to your friends to no matter what they're doing.
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Troy
What's the first step to become an H Vac tech?
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Vincent Taylor
If you want to get into the trade and you you don't have much money, you could take and practice for your EPA examination. This is how my business got started.
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Rashad
What type of jobs are going to be the ones that I'm going to go to first?
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Vincent Taylor
In H Vac you make your most money off your lowest cost parts. If a tech comes to your house and your transformers blown, you're looking at at least maybe 500 to 600 bucks.
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Troy
What do you have to do to become an entrepreneur. Like, what's the first step for that?
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Vincent Taylor
Most black men's problem is how do you make a of lot, lot of money legally? The main problem is getting the work. The summer will make you think that you're the richest man on earth. It's like the gold rush. People just cannot live without AC when it's hot, I don't even want to go to sleep because I'm scared I may not wake up in the morning because I have so much money to make the next day.
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Troy
How do you know how to price?
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Vincent Taylor
You can't be too high and you can't be too low. You could sell yourself to a point where people want to be involved with you. If you just hone in on one thing for one time, I guarantee it'll change your life.
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Troy
All right.
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Rashad
Yeah.
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Troy
Welcome back. Special live episode how to series has returned.
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Rashad
It's been a minute.
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Troy
Yeah, we did this last year. We did a bunch of them last year. We did real estate investual intelligence investing, you know, with Keanu Watts, Kiana Watson. As far as all of the things that you need to know about buying a home outside of just the regular home price purchasing. So these, these how to episodes are like the hybrid interviews because they're like really, really just meant to get as much information as possible. And so much over the last year, oh, so much conversation about trades. And that's something that we never really covered on earn your leisure. We never really had an in depth conversation on trades. And when you hear, you know, black rock investing in the trades and, you know, you hear people like billionaires talking about this is going to be the gateway to the future. And Jeff Bezos and so many different people with the age of artificial intelligence saying that one of the few things that actually look promising are trades because there's a deficit in the amount of people that we have as far as plumbers, electricians, and, you know, painters and different things of that nature. And as more homes are going to be needed, more data centers are going to be needed. More, you know, residential commercial buildings are going to be built. These skills are going to become more and more and more valuable. And this is something especially in the educational realm. It's a different form of education. You don't necessarily have to go to college. You don't have to have a master's degree. Sometimes, you know, people are trying to figure it out, whether they're young or they're even older, trying to figure out a second career or a new career pathway. Entrepreneurship for sure. Because you know, all of these traits, business owners. One thing is to actually learn the skill. Another thing is to actually be a business owner that can do both that, you know, you. You have this skill, but then you also have your own business. So, yeah, I say that to say, started going down a rabbit hole. I'm actually building a home right now. And I actually asked my. My contractor, I said, look, what's the. What's like, the fastest way? What's the fastest trait that a person could get into right now? And what's the fastest one? Because he was like, well, electrician is hard because that's like four years of apprentice, and you got to do another four years. He's like, that's really hard. He's like, plumber is kind of difficult too. He said, honestly, the fastest way and the thing that I would recommend the most is H Vac. He was like, you know, obviously, it's not easy, but that's something. A couple years, you can get up and running, you get the apprentice. Like, he's like, that would be my recommendation. Oh, I know. It's just. As fate would have it, we actually know H Vac entrepreneur. We'll tell a backstory, but somebody from our neighborhood, somebody that's been an H Vac entrepreneur for a very long period of time, somebody that was actually a client of mine when I was a financial planner, I actually, you know, put together some plans for him when he was a H. Was a H vacant Entrepreneur. Still is. So I was like, you know what? Earn your leisure. We always talk about the stock market, investing, real estate, you know, all of these different industries. I think it's time that we covered the blue collar industries. We should start with the industry. The trait that, you know, what was told is, is probably the quickest to get up and running. And somebody that we already had a relationship with.
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Rashad
Yeah, I think it's important. We grew up in a neighborhood where we were in high school. They had trade schools, we have vocational schools, and that's kind of going away. So being able to give a platform to that, giving people an opportunity to see that in real life from people we actually know, I think is incredible. So we in for a treat.
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Troy
So let's do it. Without further ado, let's bring our guest up. What's the deal, my brother?
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Vincent Taylor
Hey, how's it going, guys?
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Rashad
What's the deal, man?
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Vincent Taylor
Good, good. Happy to be here, man. Happy to be here and talk about some H Vac.
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Rashad
You know, talk about age back.
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Vincent Taylor
We.
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Rashad
We will remiss to to leave out the part that you are also Jamaican. So we don't support that. My guy, Vince.
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Vincent Taylor
What's going on? Nothing much, man. Just glad to be here, you know, and just to give this wealth of information out to everybody, you know, so.
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Troy
All right, so Vincent Taylor, right? As I say, from our neighborhood, I, I, we actually have a relationship. From me being a financial advisor, that was probably over 10 years ago, maybe, maybe longer.
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Rashad
20.
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Vincent Taylor
About 20 or so.
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Troy
Yeah. It's been a minute.
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Rashad
Don't age us, man.
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Troy
And, and I came and, and I came to your house then and it was like one of these things, you know, as a financial advisor, just networking, meeting people, getting referrals, and like, yo, you should talk to Vinnie, man. He's doing his thing, got an H Vac company. And at the time, I didn't even know what H Vac was. And I came, I remember that, that day clearly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do too. I came, sat in your house, talked, and you had, you was telling me about your company and the different jobs that you got and, you know, the vans that you had the vans on the road and you were sending workers to different places. So, you know, fast forward when it was time, when it's time to do this, you still, you're still an entrepreneur to this day. So I want you to, we're going to talk, we're going to this episode. We're going to tell people how to become an H Vac entrepreneur. But before we even get into that, what is your journey? How did, how did you become a H Vac entrepreneur?
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Vincent Taylor
Well, basically, my journey was a little bit uncanny and very different from the normal process. You know, first of all, my parents were immigrants from Jamaica, and my mother was a nurse, and my father was an H Vac tech, but he was an oil burner technician for commercial industrial. And, you know, we never really knew what my father did. You know, he just come home in a blue uniform. But we knew my mom was a nurse. So, you know, I never was a mechanical person. I never was fixing my cars. I was never that type of person growing up. But, you know, I worked on my bikes and things like that growing up. But as I got older now, I really had to figure out my life. Like, life started hitting me at, like, 28, 29. I was getting married. I was, you know, about to buy a house. I was going through all these stages, and I knew that what I did in high school wasn't enough to make me really progress in college. So I knew that I had to create. I'VE always created my own lane and my own jobs. When I wanted to be an executive, I made myself an executive. I only applied for executive jobs. So I knew I had to do something, but I didn't know what path to really choose. But I knew that my father always gave us a good life growing up because he made more money than my mom. We always knew he was the breadwinner of the family. So I said, you know what? Let me try to take a step into that path, because I just know that I'm living in a good neighborhood, I'm going to good schools. We were in the middle class section growing up, so I knew that growing up. So I was like, you know what? Let me just try to do what he does. But I knew I didn't have the mental capacity for it. So I took the path of just really, like when they say Obama had the book the Audacity of Hope, I had the audacity to have the audacity of hope because there was no one around. There was no Internet. I was using MapQuest to get the job. Like, there was no. There was no other black entrepreneur guy in the neighborhood who had his own company or there was no one to really look up to. So what I did was around 28, 29 years old, I realized I did not want to be broke at 30. I just. It was just gave me the chills, literally, like Figgy said. So I said, what am I going to do? I had about $30,000 left to my name, to my entire existence. And I thought for months, should I do a food, restaurant, clothing company, open up a store? I was thinking of all these things, but I knew that they could have a very big loss, especially restaurants, you know, that has like a 70% failure rate. So I was researching all these things and I was like, what am I going to do that is really going to support a family and, you know, have a big ticket item and I don't want to make little money. You know, I was used to kind of making a big portion of money in the streets. So I was like, you know, what can I do to make real money but legally? And that I believe is most black men's problem is how do you make a lot of money legally? You know, and that was the whole issue back then. So I pondered on it. I grabbed my cousin, who was a female. I knew she had a clean record. She was a school teacher, she was smart, she could email, do all these things. Things. I grabbed her, I said, listen, I got the money. You're Going to be the front person. And I had to learn the business side first. I didn't know anything mechanical. So I said, okay, I'm going to learn the business side. I grabbed my cousin, I did some research. I knew a girl who worked at a plumbing company and literally me and my cousin, we went out, we bought her a Louis Vuitton bag with the cherries on it. I went to her job one day after work. This is the true story. She was from Yonkers. I went to her job one day after work. It's like a two thousand dollar bag at the time. I gave her the bag and I said, please, can you just show me and open up the books to me and how do I do this? She gave me the insurance companies to sign up to. She gave me Sears, how to sign up to them to be a contractor. She gave me the general liability information. She gave me just a, the blueprint for the office part. And I took that office part and I got with my cousin and we started to slowly figure out how to start an H VAC company. You know, how to go and get a sole proprietorship or just to go get your bank account to get certified to get the whole process started. But before I did that, we had a thing in the neighborhood called the Penny Savers. I don't know if you guys remember.
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Rashad
Yeah, man, yeah. Delivered to your house every Saturday.
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Vincent Taylor
So I told my cousin, I said, listen, she was a school teacher, she really didn't like teaching high school and she was trying to venture out on her own. And I had no purpose. And you know what I was going to do? So I said, you know what, we're going to flip a coin. I'm going to run an ad in the Penny Savers. If we get an ad or a job, we'll continue. If we don't, we just don't want to waste our money and don't want to waste our time. I flipped the coin, it landed on heads. I ran a $300 ad. It took me two weeks. I ran a $300 ad. And then somebody called me literally from that Penny Saver ad. They said, come to our house in Yonkers, we want to put in a boiler. I didn't know what a boiler was. I didn't know anything of what to do. I went to the house with my cousin. The guy said, can you put in a boiler? I said, yes, I can. Because I knew my father could do the work. So I basically was starting my company around my father and my uncles that were already in the trade. I said, yeah, I could put in a boiler. He came out from the back room. He gave my cousin $6,000 cash. She was fumbling with the money because she wasn't used to getting scared. So I grabbed the money from her, and I said, I wasn't even counting it. I was just going through. I said, yep, it's all there. And he said, when can you put it in? I said, I could do it this week. This is when I learned, guys, this is when the magic happened. I called up a H Vac supply house. I said, how much is a boiler? They were like, well, the boiler's around, like, 1600 or so. So I said, okay, 1600. I gave my father a thousand dollars to put the boiler in. That was 2,600. I bought about $300 in parts and fittings. So I was like, wow, we made $3,000 in one day. That's when it just, like, we could just never go back to work. It just didn't make any sense. It literally made no sense. And my father did the job with his friend, like, the next day after work, and they put in the boiler, and I made 3,000 clear, like, without doing any work. Like, literally. I didn't lift a screwdriver. I wasn't a helper back then. I couldn't really do anything. That's when the light bulb went off. I was like, we are worth so much more. Like, I. I. And then from there, we signed up to Sears. I started doing contracting with Sears. I started doing so many things. And then I started realizing that, you know, basically, you can make whatever you want per day. And then I started telling all my friends, like, listen, guys, I found a way, like, you don't have to do this on the streets anymore. You can make 5,000, 10,000, $15,000 away. Like, I found the loophole. Some people listened and some people didn't. So I took the ones that listened. We went to school, you know, I. You know, and then it just became like a snowball effect. You know, me and my cousin, we. That's when we had first bought our house, Rashad. After that, we ran our company for, like, two years or so, three years. Then we say, hey, you know, let's start buying some property. I bought a house. She bought a house. She never went back to teaching, ever. And she was a female. She wind up marrying an H Vac tech. So then they started their own company. And then that's when I branched out on my own. But it was a tough journey. You know, I had to Hire guys where I knew nothing. I had to depend on guys. And then I just learned from all the top techs that I hired. But then eventually I had to go back to school, you know, because I was paying guys like $100 just to put two wires together because I didn't know any better. So when I went back to school, I went to Boces and I took every class one by one. I went to night school because I was running a company making more money than the teacher in the class. My teacher in Boces would always tell me, vince, you could leave the class whenever you want. You can take.
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Troy
So, so just, just people that don't know. Boces is a trade school.
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Vincent Taylor
Yeah.
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Troy
So you, so you was an entrepreneur. You had a company up and running because you had your dad, but you didn't, you didn't actually know the skill set yourself. So you went to TR Trade school to learn H Vac while actually owning a H Vac company.
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Vincent Taylor
While I was in class, I had three trucks on the road. And you know, sometimes even the teacher in class would be telling us stuff and I'd be like, well, that's not exactly true because I just did that job yesterday. He said, vince, we'll talk after class real quick, real quick.
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Rashad
Because your dad is doing the jobs. Two parts like west ending your family. Obviously is dad proud when you start going into H Vac? And the other part is when does he catch on that he's hiring me for jobs and I'm actually working for my son?
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Vincent Taylor
Yeah, he caught on to that. You know, he wind up retiring after like a 40 plus year career. And he was like the Michael Jordan of oil. Like literally I, you know, he was the best. I mean if anybody out there knows he did Cleaver Brooks boilers, strictly hotels, hospital industrial. So I mean he, once he started realizing the money that I was paying him, he always told me, he was like, if I would have did this years ago. But nobody with first Jamaican generation coming from Jamaica at that time, see, that was the thing. Nobody thought they could own a company. And when I did that, it was just like a shockwave because it was like, how does Vincent Taylor own a company? How did you buy a house? And he said, this is what I want to tell everybody so much in the trade. This trade will make you catch up to your friends to no matter what they're doing within a five year to eight or ten year period of time. Because what I did was okay, first of all, I knew that in high school that everything that I was learning at that time wasn't going to help me. I knew this way before my time. The Boston Tea Party, the jet. I just knew that it wasn't going to help me. So I paid no attention. I graduated high school with a 65 point grade average. Rashad's mom, I took her class three times in a row. She said, Vince, I like you a lot and everything, but you gotta do so. You know.
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Troy
Vince, you remember what you did to me, right? Halloween, you remember that?
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Vincent Taylor
Oh gosh, this guy, I don't know. Just another segment. Can we do that for the other segment?
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Rashad
We all graduated from that high school
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Vincent Taylor
basically. You know, I knew those skills weren't going to help me so I never really concentrated. Now look, everybody that was in regions gifted and talented, all those special classes, I know they are not making as much money as me. It's impossible, it's impossible, you know. And then I learned the light bulb went off. I was like, okay, you just have to learn something specific and hone in on that and then you will make the money. You know, that's what college was supposed to be like. You go there and learn something specific and get a job with that. But then all my friends came home from college and got jobs with nothing that they went to college for. That's when I knew I had a chance. So I was able to make the money. Okay. My first year as a business owner by myself with just a computer and a three in one fax machine. I probably did like 180,000 me and my first year, so we thought we were on our way, you know, on the road to the richest get rid of water, you know. So my second year, you know, we went up, we were going up to like two eighties, three eighties. I never reached the five hundred thousand dollar mark, you know. So I never really got out of that bubble. I got stuck in the middle class section. But coming from where I was coming from, that was like Hollywood, you know. So I was happy to be there. My, my wife Never worked for 18 years. She was a stay at home mom. My kids, you know, went to school. My daughter just graduated from Spelman this year. Thank you. So you know, she was able to live the soccer mom life, you know, for an African American woman. And at the time that felt good coming from a guy like me coming from just media. My wife has a master's degree, college degree. She graduated from school, she had all the degrees. I only had a 65 point grade average from high school. But I made the most money using what the trade brought me. This trade is just so, so wonderful. Like, sometimes I don't even want to go to sleep because I'm scared I may not wake up in the morning because I have so much money to make the next day when I leave here. Now I have at least three to five thousand dollars to make. Literally.
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Troy
Well, it's also, it's. It's interesting because the circle, like, you talked about the school, but now you're actually teaching. You're a teacher.
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Vincent Taylor
Yes. I just got a job with Westchester Community College. I just got a professor, adjunct professor position for H Vac, which now, as you guys know, Westchester Community College has never had a vocational program. They said demand is so high, the classes are booked for a semester's coming up, you know. Thank you. I also spoke with the director of Mike Jones, who runs the Southern Westchester BOCES program. He said the vocational program is so booked, the classes are packed. They don't have enough room for students. The fall class coming up for this winter is already jam packed and booked. It's amazing if H Vac is just something right now that is just. I have my guy. I took out Apex. I'm affiliated with Apex, Lincoln Tech and boces. I'm normally on the advisory board for those schools. I took my apprentice. Now, he was 18 years old. I took him out of Apex. He came straight from Jamaica. The first thing he did was sign up to trade school. I went to Apex. I said, who's the best student here? They pointed him out. I took him from 18 years old. He's now 21 years old. He's making at least 10001500 dollars a week. Or he could make more if he wants. At 21 years old, like. And he's learned so much, he can almost go on now to do his own thing if he wanted, you know? So if you want to catch up, I know guys that are 18 to 21, 25, that are making more money than their parents. You will make more money than your parents if you're in this trade.
- [24:21]
Rashad
So, Vince, we gotta break this down, right? So H Vac, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, right? You go to trade school. And again, shout out to both these that that program is. I actually used to work for Southern Westchester Bothies for like six years. Talk about how long did it take you to actually grasp the skill? Obviously you. You are in the job training because you. You're watching it, right? That's like not theory anymore. You're actually putting those things. How long did it get to you? Like, all right, I'm comfortable. I learned These skills. What's the time frame? Okay, how long does it take the
- [24:54]
Vincent Taylor
average time, they say for you to be a confident tech? To say, okay, I can go out there and, you know, be on my own and handle myself? That's going to take you about three, three to five years, depending on how many jobs you're really going out there and doing. See, me being a company owner, I was just going on jobs day and night, every single day. Sunday, Saturday, holidays, Christmas, New Year's, Super Bowl, I was on jobs every single day. So the more jobs you do, that's how you're really going to build yourself up. But in three to five years, you could be a solid tech. You could almost say, I could start to go out on my own now. And in about five years, you should be good.
- [25:35]
Troy
All right, so now we're gonna get into the how to section. So we're gonna ask you, like, direct questions, and then you just give us the answers as far as, like, you know, really, like how to. Right. So the first is, okay, I just got out of college, but I can't find a job. I. I changed my mind. Now I want to become H Vac. Right. What do I do? Like, what's the first step to become H Vac Tech? What's the first step to become an H Vac Tech?
- [25:59]
Vincent Taylor
Basically, yeah, just coming out of college and you want to switch roles and go into something else, first thing you would do is try to apply to a trade school. If you can. You get into a trade school, that's going to take you maybe about a year, depending, and then from there you would have to get into your first company. But you see, the problem is sometimes a lot of companies don't want to hire guys with no experience. That's where guys and people meet the roadblock. But then how do you get experience if you don't get a job? So you, you know, you got to really apply yourself. You. But there's a ton of positions that are open. There are a lot of avenues. You could work in a supply house, you could be a technician, you could be a product rep. There's so many different roles out there. But if you want to be a technician and get into the field, you're going to have to go through some sort of training. You know, it's formal school training, and you try to get your first job or if you get lucky for a company just to take you on and just say, all right, come on in. And those guys seem to me to be worked out a lot, you know, it works out very well because I've taken females, I've taken males, people who don't speak English. I've had all walks and forms of life that I've trained. That's why I become good at the training. Because if I could train you and you don't speak much English and then you understand it or, you know, I started to figure out a pattern of how to sink this into people, but that would be your normal process. I mean, it's going to take you about a year or two, a couple of years to kind of get used to the verbiage and the language and the tools. It's a lot to get into. That's why if you're not really honed in and you're not really zoned in, it's not going to work for you. That's why people that go to school, it kind of works because they've already spent $20,000 to go to school, or 16, 18, $20,000 sometimes could be more. So they. They want to get their investment back. But if you will get that investment back very fast, if you apply yourself. You know, I never heard of a broke plumber or a broke electrician or a broke H Vac. I just haven't heard of.
- [28:06]
Rashad
You said honed in and zoned in. And this is not just theory, right? Shout out to my fam, Randy. I know he was working with you, but you talked about.
- [28:14]
Vincent Taylor
I started his company, too, and trained him.
- [28:16]
Rashad
I'm proud of him. I'm proud of him.
- [28:18]
Vincent Taylor
Yeah, you.
- [28:18]
Rashad
You talked about being an apprentice, and that's important, too. Right after I. I go to the vocational school.
- [28:24]
Troy
We.
- [28:25]
Rashad
We call it mentorship. Some people call it internship. I know in this space, we call it apprenticeship. How does one go about that? Like, how do you know the person that you should be seeking mentorship from?
- [28:36]
Vincent Taylor
That's true. You got to really do your research. I know Bruni and Campisa used to have a mentorship thing where they would hire techs. You know, I ran my own program. What I did was, you know, I had a program where I charged $6,000, and I would get you EPA certified. I would train you, and being that I have a company, I would take you out on jobs every single day. So you get on the job training, and I would also pay them as well for that. So that program worked really well. You got to try to get into a company, you got to fight your way in. You got to knock on the door, show them that you're hungry, you know, say, hey, I'm here. I want to work. Most companies really will take guys if they see the hunger. You're coming in on time every day. You really want it. You have to have that hunger and you have to have that drive in you. And they will take you and mold you into what you, you know, they want you to be, you know, because they're going to make an investment into you. You know, they'll send you to schools. I know guys that didn't have any EPA certifications, but they were just so good at what they do, companies would hire them. I know guys that worked for electrical companies that were illegal immigrants. But the boss just knew that they were so good at what they do, they ran the whole electrical jobs. So you know, companies just really want people that can sell good workers and you know, things that can, you know, help them to get through. Most of the electricians and plumbers that are licensed don't really do the hard work. You know, they're there for the, for the permits and to get everything set up, you know.
- [30:14]
Dell PC Announcer
Dell PCs with Intel inside are built for the moments that matter. For the moments you plan and the ones you don't. Built for the busy days that turn into all night study sessions. The moment you're working from a cafe and realize every outlet's taken the times you deepen your flow and the absolute last thing you need is an auto update throwing off your momentum. That's why Dell builds tech that adapts to the way you actually work. Built with long lasting battery so you're not scrambling for the closest outlet. And built in intelligence that makes updates around Delta your schedule, not in the middle of it. They don't build tech for tech's sake, they build it for you. Find technology built for the way you work@dell.com DellPCS built for you
- [31:02]
Rashad
earners. You know what separates a lot of companies today?
- [31:05]
Vincent Taylor
Speed.
- [31:06]
Rashad
Not just having a great idea, but how fast you can actually execute it. Because we've all seen it before. Marketing wants a new landing page design. Already mocked it up and engineering says we'll get to it next week. Meanwhile, opportunity is already gone. That's why so many businesses from startups to Fortune 500 companies are building with Framer. Framer is a website builder that turns your.com from just a digital business card into an actual growth engine. It works like your team's favorite design tool with real time collaboration, a powerful cms, built in SEO, tools, analytics and even a B testing so your team can build, optimize and launch faster. And the best part changes Go live in seconds with one click. Publish without needing engineering to step in every single time. Framer also gives enterprise level hosting security and 99.99% uptime SLAs, which is why brands like Perplexity, Miro and Mixpanel trust them to power their websites. Whether you're launching a new brand, testing landing pages or rebuilding your entire site, Framer helps you move from idea to execution fast. Fast. Learn how to get more out of your.com from a framer specialist or get started building for free. Today@Famer.com earn for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's Framer.com earn for 30% off Framer.com earn rules and restrictions may apply.
- [32:30]
Vincent Taylor
Yes you can. A five minute quick and easy calorie burning workout. Give it a try. Come join our sweatsesh on TikTok.
- [32:42]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast range. Radio Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart streaming radio and podcasting. Call 844-844 iHeart to get started. That's 844-844, iHeart.
- [33:13]
Rashad
Yeah, so you mentioned the EPA certification. That's important. Are there other certifications that they need to have?
- [33:18]
Vincent Taylor
Okay, now this is good. You said that. Now this is what could really help people out there. If you want to get into the trade and you don't have much money and you're discouraged. If you're smart enough and you're a good person that could comprehend things, read things and comprehend and then answer questions, you could go to mainstream engineering 608 and you could take and practice for your EPA examination. The EPA is about 100 questions. It's 25 questions in each section. I believe it's four sections. There's a type one, type two, and then there's the universal certification. So once you get your epa, it's basically that's your air conditioning license. So let's just say like you guys right now you could take two or three weeks out and you could say, all right, I'm going to study this pamphlet and take my EPA test. You can get certified and just get your epa. Not know any air conditioning. Just take the test. This is how my business got started. My cousin bought the EPA test on a Friday. She studied it. She was a school teacher. She took it on a Monday, and she just barely passed it. And that's how we started our company, because she passed her EPA test. She knew nothing about air conditioning. Now, that EPA certification lasts for the rest of your life. There's no renewing it. And that allows you to buy air conditioning equipment. You could shop in the supply house like you guys do a lot of building and stuff like that. You get your epa, you can say, all right, guys, I'll buy all the equipment. Just give me the list. You guys buy all the equipment at the cost and make them do the labor. That's one way you could just save, by just having your epa. I made my sister get her epa. I made everybody around me get the epa. Because you never know when you might need to go to a supply house, buy a water heater, buy a furnace. You can actually buy it and make your person come and put it in. So that's a very simple process. You don't need to go spend $20,000 and sit a year in school, because at the end of the process, it's to get that epa, which, once you get that piece of paper, it's pretty much you can do what you want as long as you understand the practices of air conditioning and the rules and regulations of what the EPA is providing. You know, if you're driving in your truck, canisters have to be in an upright position. You know, gases have to be labeled. Once you learn all those things, that's really what the EPA is about. The Environmental Protection association wants you to do good air conditioning practices. But even when you get your epa, that doesn't mean that Rashad could call you and say, hey, come fix my air conditioning. Because you don't really know any practical skills. You just know what the Montreal Protocol wants you to know and things, things like that. But that certification will get you into any supply house. Order anything, and companies will hire you. They will hire you and say, all right. He took the liberty of getting the EPA because you technically can't work around any refrigerants or gases unless you understand the laws of safety and what to do. But that's very good, because once you get that, you can skip a lot of the process.
- [36:37]
Troy
You know, so talk about the low, low voltage wiring basics. Like, what's the basics that people should know?
- [36:45]
Vincent Taylor
Well, basically, with low voltage wiring, everyone has a thermostat in your house and stuff. So if you pop your thermostat off the wall and you look at the wires behind it. You're basically going to always see these terminals. R, Y, G, common, W. And then I have an O slash B here. Terminal. These terminals are in every thermostat, no matter what you have. So R represents power, that's 24 volts. So R would be 24 volts of power. Y represents AC, that's for cooling. The G terminal would represent the fan. That's what brings your blower motor on your fan on. The C wire would represent common. And that's a 24 volt terminal as well. The W terminal, that's for your heat, that's always going to make heat. So these wires go from here to your inside control board. This here is a control board that would be in every single house or some type of control board like this that would go from your thermostat to your control board. So here are the wires here that are on the board. Y, W, G and common. So these same wires go to your inside unit, whatever you have an air handler or a boiler. And this would turn on the indoor unit and then it would also turn on the outdoor unit. So basically R would connect to R, Y would connect to Y. The G terminal would connect to G. Common would go to common, W would go to W. And then for air conditioning, Y would go outside to the condenser and common would also come outside to the condenser to bring 24 volts to the contactor to start up your outdoor unit. So that in a layman's terms, that's just how your low voltage would work. But then you would say what powers up your control board to make your low voltage work would be your transformer. And in this trade we work with step down transformers only. Can you guys still see me?
- [38:57]
Rashad
Yeah, yeah, we got you.
- [38:58]
Vincent Taylor
Okay. So basically with transformers, everyone has this in your house or your buildings or whatever you're doing, you have to have a transformer. So these two wires, the black and the red, I could connect 120 volts to these two wires and it would step it down to 24 volts on this side. This side always stays with 24 volts. If I had a, a air handler that was 208 volts. This white wire, if you guys can't see on here, but the common wire is the white wire. This wire is always used with another wire. So white and orange, you could use 208 volts. The 208 volts would come here. The transformer steps it down to 24 volts on the other side. This 24 volts goes into your control board, and that's what illuminates the lights on your board or the LED lights. And that's what gives the terminals power here. So like I taught in the EYL class, never ever look to the wires for the power. Yes, you could test the wires for power, but it's the terminals that are giving the wire power. Now, by code, the Y terminal, which is for ac, that would be a yellow wire by code. The white wire would be for W for heating, by code. The green wire would be for the fan, by code. And blue or brown would normally be used for common. But you can never watch the color of the wires. You have to watch where the wire is going to the terminal, because somebody could use a red wire for air conditioning for Y. But as long as it's going to the Y terminal, it's doing what it has to do. So never look at the colors of the wires, always look at the terminal where the wire is going. But as long as they're going to the right terminals, you're okay. And, you know, so basically, if r is getting 24 volts, let's just say it's Christmas Eve in your house, Troy, and the heat goes out and for some reason you think it's the thermostat. You want to override the thermostat. Now, you could take off your thermostat and take the R wire and put it together with the W wire, and that would override your thermostat and make your heat come off on. So when R and W make your heat comes on, when R and Y and G make your air conditioning system comes on. So R is like the 24 volts that is connecting with all these terminals that connect with your control board and that will bring on your condenser. So if you put the R, Y and G together, the air conditioning would come on and the fan would come on. If you want to test your heating to see is my heat working, you could put the R wire with the W wire. These are just 24 volts. But I would tell you this, never ever jump an R in common, because then you will blow the transformer. You have 24 volts going together. That would be no good. So never ever jump R in common. But you could jump R with all the other terminals. That's also very good to know for a lot of safety reasons that that's big man.
- [42:22]
Rashad
Just completed a house. You talking about that circuit boards getting back to the transformers. It's all in line, man. It's all online. I wonder when you're talking about heating, ventilation, ac, when I'm starting, what type of jobs are going to be the ones that I'm going to go to first? Right. Like I wouldn't imagine, is it heating first? Is it AC first?
- [42:46]
Vincent Taylor
Which was more practical to start? Well, every home is built with heating. You have to have heating in your house. Air conditioning is a luxury. If you have air conditioning, that's pretty much a luxury that you have in your house. But you have to build the house with heating. See, what I've noticed is in this trade is that if a company hires you, they're going to put you where they want to. You may want to be a service tech, but you may get thrown on the install team. So you don't really have a choice sometimes when you're first coming and you just kind of go with the flow. So I might come out of school and get hired somewhere and they might throw me on the install team. I might be an installer for three years or might be an installer forever, or I may want to get out of installing and try to go to service. So either one is good. You're going to make good money on either side. But it's what do you, you like to do? Like installers are like mostly heavy, more brutal type of work. The service work is a lot more with your brain and a lot more, you know, regular hand tools and using your brain but installing, you have to use your brain too. But it's more heavy lifting, more. You're kind of in the brutal combat, you know. So if you're a rough and tough guy and you like lifting and you know, working with ducks and a lot of heavy machinery, then you know, installs for, for you. But if you want to be a service tech and go from house to house and fix things and keep your day moving like that, then, you know, you kind of want to be a service tech, you know, and just also I wanted to show you guys something. This transformer in H vac, you make your most money off your lowest cost parts. This transformer cost about maybe 16 to $30 the most. Now if a tech comes to your house and your transformers blown, I mean you're looking at at least maybe 500 to 600 bucks to complete that call, you know, with just labor and parts, you know. So if you could understand a lot of these small parts, it's very good for you. A thermostat, it to change a thermostat, I just changed two thermostats. Yesterday, I charged a customer $800, you know, and, you know, thermostats can range between 100 to $400 or, you know, but that's for 15 to 30 minutes worth of work. It's not even really like a full hour, you know, so you could almost make your own price. You can charge what you're worth, and you could make like. Once I learned how to change a thermostat, I went to every job and changed the thermostat. You know, I was. Because I just saw the extra money in it. You know, you could buy a thermostat for 100 bucks, make an extra 250 in 15 minutes. It's not bad money. You know, there are people that are working hours, $30 an hour, $40, and they have to work hours and hours after taxes to get to like a 300 for the day or 400, you know, so if you can make that very, very quickly. That's what I love about the. With the trade. It's like, you know, you can just make so much in a very little bit of space of time. As.
- [45:59]
Rashad
As you were saying it, I'm thinking about the thermostats. I got an echo B. So, yeah, a little bit more than $30.
- [46:06]
Vincent Taylor
But no, your thermostat's going to be more because it's a WI fi. And remember, you need that common wire to operate your thermostat. That's what illuminates your thermostat because there's no batteries in there.
- [46:17]
Rashad
Right, right, right. I'm thinking from a safety standpoint, what are some of, like, the procedures and protocols when going into a job, because you're dealing with electric, which can be, you know, extremely dangerous. What are the things you tell people before going into a job?
- [46:32]
Vincent Taylor
Basically, when I train all my guys, I. I do a lot of safety training as well as, you know, we go into the house, you got to come correct. Uniform booties always turn off the power. If you're not sure what you're dealing with, troubleshoot from there. Sometimes we have to troubleshoot with the power live, but always, you know, go to your practices. You know, start with the basics, but you definitely have to use all safety procedures. You know, going in, there's no reason. There's no way to really tell what to do, because every house is different. You really got to have to use your judgment and use all your training. That's where your training really comes in at, you know, so let's get into
- [47:16]
Troy
the entrepreneur aspect of it, because that's Earn your leisure. That's for people, they want to know how to become, you know, H Vac tech. But I'm sure they probably want to know how to, how to own a company, how to navigate that. So what's this? Okay, so you, you got your H Vac certification, you got, you know, you got in with a company, you worked a couple of years as a, as a worker, you, you got your feet wet, you saved up some money. Now you want to become an entrepreneur. What do you have to do to become an entrepreneur? Like, what's the first steps for that? What's the licensing? What's, what's, how do you become, how do you own a company?
- [47:47]
Vincent Taylor
This is, this is very good question, because I've done this for so many people to help them start businesses. Okay, What I recommend is this. If you don't have much money and you want to get things going, the first thing you could do is go to your municipality. For us, it was in White Plains, and you could go and get either an LLC or a sole proprietorship. A sole proprietorship is a lot easier sometimes if you don't have the money for the insurances for the llc, get your sole proprietorship. You go to that building, you pick out your company name. You got to pick out like five different names. They're going to put it in the computer, see if the name's available. You paid literally it's $35 to get your business license. This is why I don't understand people sometimes. But you pay your $35, you get your business name, they stamp it. Now you take that business name license and you bring that to the bank, the bank takes that. You open up a bank account with your business name. Sometimes the bank will give you your ein number. Sometimes you could apply for that. Once you get your business name and you get your bank account from there, you just need general liability insurance, which is not really that much. You get, I mean, a million dollar policy or a $2 million policy, you know, you could pay maybe a couple hundred dollars a month and you know, you'll need an auto policy if you have a van from there. The main problem is getting the work. That's where the hidden mystery, the gray area is for everyone, you know, because people can almost buy a van and get this process started. But it's, it's getting the work that's the whole real ball of wax, so that you have to do everything you've got to pay for leads you got. I'm a minority business owner. Most of my partners are Female. So they're a double minority business owners. I've used government contracting. I've had, I've done all the military bases in New York. I had a great government contract for a couple of years. Those are great. If you get a government contract, that's a great way. You've got to look for developers, real estate developers, people like that, big whales who are building in New York City or anywhere in your area. Look for those type of people. Other contractors you can link up with
- [50:10]
Dell PC Announcer
Dell PCs with Intel inside are built for the moments that matter. For the moments you plan and the ones you don't. Built for the busy days that turn into all night study sessions. The moment you're working from a cafe and realize every outlet's taken. The times you deepen your flow and the absolute last thing you need is an auto update throwing off your momentum. That's why Dell builds tech that adapts to the way you actually work. Built with long lasting battery so you're not scrambling for the closest outlet. And built in intelligence that makes updates around your schedule, not in the middle of it. They don't build tech for tech's sake, they build it for you. Find technology built for the way you work@dell.com DellPCS built for you.
- [50:58]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think iHeart streaming radio and podcasting. Let us show you@iheartadvertising.com that's iheartadvertising.com hey,
- [51:30]
Vincent Taylor
it's us, the Jonas Brothers. And guess what? We have some big news.
- [51:32]
Rashad
What's the news?
- [51:33]
Vincent Taylor
Huge news. We created our own podcast podcast called hey Jonas.
- [51:37]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
We invented a podcast.
- [51:39]
Vincent Taylor
Well, we didn't invent it, we. We just contributed to it.
- [51:41]
Rashad
First people to do podcasts.
- [51:43]
Vincent Taylor
Pretty. Yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts. But this one's extra special. So how did we, how do we actually come up with the name hey Jonas? Guys, I honestly don't remember.
- [51:53]
Dell PC Announcer
I think it was on a call
- [51:54]
Vincent Taylor
about what we should call it and well, we were thinking, I'm originally calling it one of the early names, names of our band before Jonas Brothers. This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes, I have a very different memory of this. We were Talking about a thing a bit for the podcast where people could call in and say, hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, hey, Jonas. And offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that. Guys, listen to hey, Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen, Listen. We don't care where you hear it. On Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends, we help make you funnier. On this episode, my guests Bob Odenkirk and Kids in The Hall's Bruce McCullough try and help the Kazoo Kid and Tayon Day be famous again. What if there's an alternate universe show where you guys are incredibly popular?
- [52:45]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
Well, and they could travel up the land doing meet and greets.
- [52:50]
Vincent Taylor
They're constantly needed at malls.
- [52:52]
Troy
Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel
- [52:54]
Vincent Taylor
and friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, there's so many AI things with generating leads, but what I did. This is very important, what I did. I realized this was gonna happen a while back when I was paying for leads and trying to figure out how to get business. So what I did was I started businesses for all of my friends and people that were serious. So in case my business didn't do good and they were better at other things in business than me, if their companies are doing good now, I get work from the community that I built within my own community. Like, my friend called me today, shout out to Marcus from Platinum Kids. He called me today. He said, vince, I need help. I literally have over 10 installs that I cannot do. So I was like, okay, I'll do one install a day for you. Now, this is a friend who I started a company for, whose company is just growing so big that now he's giving back work to me. So I figured out that this is the best way for me. Instead of paying for leads or doing other things, I get jobs from all my techs who I started companies for, who I trained. So we kind of have built our own community within our community to help generate work for each other. So that's one thing that I would tell people to start doing, you know, building with your friends in your community, because everyone has a different type of luck and everyone has a different situation, and then they could bring it back to the table, you know? So Covid, I believe, really woke up a lot of people in that, realizing when the world stopped, I was still working. I never stopped working a day through Covid. You know, people would leave the money on the floor, but I would still pick it up, you know, so it's just a wonderful thing. So now I have a community of people where, hey, Vince, I got a job here. I got a job here. I'm calling people, hey, you go do this, do that. So we're all kind of working together. I think that's the best way to build it. But you have to use every avenue leads, minority businesses, government contracts, go door to door. See, one thing about me was my process was different because I spent 10 years in sales before I became H Vac Tech. So I had mastered the sales game. I took all the sales training from all the companies I worked for. I let that all develop in me, you know, And I was the number one sales rep at mostly all my companies. So I. I had a great rapport with customers. I knew how to talk to people. I could go into a racist house and by the time I come out, we're best friends. So I knew how to take rejection and, you know, channel all these things to make them positive. So that kind of helped me out too. So anybody with a sales background would be great in H vac because you're selling all day long. That's really no matter how great of a tech you are.
- [55:57]
Troy
I just wanted to follow up with that because what you just said at the end, that was what I was thinking about the whole time as far as sales, because that's everything that you said, it reminded me a lot of me being a financial advisor. Like we used to call a circle of influence. So like we will work with accountants and lawyers because their clients needed financial services. So like you, circle of influence will be a general contractor, right? Because as they build a home, they're going need to refer the work and then like you said, the door to door. We used to call that like cold calling where you just randomly call a business or just walk into a business, or cold, cold canvassing was actually walking into.
- [56:38]
Vincent Taylor
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [56:41]
Troy
And then referrals. But that's brilliant as far as building a funnel. So it all connects. It all connects. But that's something that I think any business, but especially it sounds like in this business for sure, you don't just do one thing and say, I'm gonna do this to get leads, right? Like you gotta do everything. Facebook ads, Instagram ads, whatever.
- [57:03]
Vincent Taylor
Even your truck being written up. And let me tell you guys something too, too. Instagram is so great. Because look, I got my Westchester community college job from somebody that saw me on Instagram and said, hey bro, I see how you're teaching these kids out here. You'd be perfect for this job. I went there, got the job. I get so many jobs from texts that call me every day, hey, Vince, can you come help me with this job? I go there, they pay me. So it's just like, you gotta really just put yourself out there and show, show people what you do, and they will slowly gravitate to you. I get a lot, a lot of work from social media, you know, and it builds a brotherhood and a friendship. You know, I have so many people. When I started posting h vac posts, really I gained. I had 2,000 followers. I gained 5,000 followers in like a month and a half, two months. Literally like every day. I was just getting like 300, 500 followers. So I saw the algorithm and what was happening. I was putting up a post, I would get like a couple hundred thousand views on it or something like that. So I was like, wow, people are really interested in H Vac and there's a very, very big community. I have two business partners right now that are females. They both have their EPA and they run the offices. One's in Florida, one's down here. They have never went back to work. For about three years now, they've been living off of this. So even for females, if you are a female and you want a supplemental income, you don't have to do the work, but you can run the office and have everything else set up. Because most guys need a back office. They're not good with it. Most blue collar guys doing H vac, they always have either their wife or someone in the back office doing the work or the business is really in their name. A lot of the times, you know, so there's a lot of females that you can work from home. You don't have to quit your regular day job. You, all you need is a computer and a phone. Just do the scheduling and do the billing and that's it. And have the guys go out and do the work. And you will make a large profit.
- [59:12]
Rashad
I mean, you, you, you're bringing up a. I mean, that's a system, right? Like that's everybody all in. Something we know a bit about. I'm wondering, when you talked about the truck, number one, how expensive is it to get the truck? Because I'm starting the business and when I show up, what are the tools that I need? Right? Like, I'm not just showing up to the job with the empty van. Yeah, My electrician comes, my H vac team. Their truck is loaded with things. I'm like, how do they know exactly what to get and what should be inside that truck?
- [59:43]
Vincent Taylor
Yeah, well, I mean, I'm definitely, I can say I'm a tool fanatic. Like, I like to buy everything that makes the job easier. Now for H vac hand tools can be very expensive tool bags. I mean, I use veto pro pack. They're out of Connecticut. They're a great company. Great bags. Those bags go from 200 to 600 just for a tool bag. You know, good hand tools. You're going to spend maybe a grand or two on just good hand tools. But good gauges are going now from 600 to 1500 dollars for gauges. We were doing a lot of soldering and a lot of brazing in the past, but now everyone's using pro press. You know, you'll see that going on now probably for some of your homes and things. You know, they're using pro press, which cuts out the time and a lot of material. You just like, like you guys could put in a water heater so easily. You just put a pipe in a coupling, you put a machine on it, you press it, it's done, it's sealed. So they're making things so much easier now where, you know, you have to have these tools to make. I, I would say the average truck probably has about, I mean, as an H Vac tech, you probably got about $20,000 or $30,000 worth of tools could be on your truck at any time. A plumber could have anywhere from 60 grand worth of tools on up in their truck at any time. You know, so you definitely need your tools and that's what goes into the whole job when you're charging. It's your, your truck has to carry the tools to the job, you got to get to the job, you know, so all that plays a factor in what you're being charged to at the end of the day.
- [61:26]
Troy
So yeah, talk about, talk about the seasonality of, of your job. For entrepreneurs like this, this, yeah, it might be like the summer is a great season for HQ
- [61:37]
Vincent Taylor
this summer. The summer is the time, baby. The summer will make you think that you're like the richest man on earth. But it will end. I mean, but summer is so great. I mean, just as a small contractor, not even a major company, this is a small contractor. You could easily do like 80, 90 grand in the summer. You know, just 100 grand in the summer, which if you don't want to, then you don't have to work in the winter, you know, you can budget yourself out. It's all how you want to live. But the summer is the absolute best time for an H VAC tech. And the reason why is we sell Freon. Freon is like the dream. It's like the gold. The gold you guys were finding on the streets. That, that's the gold. R22 is a freon that, that's been phased out. That Freon you could sell anywhere, anywhere from 2 to $300 per pound. So we're selling gas every day per pound. And it's the most beautiful thing, like your air conditioning system. You're going to need five or six pounds of Freon in it. So even if I fix it, then you still have to pay for the Freon. If you need gas, that's another thousand dollars right there. So it's. Imagine going to every house and they need Freon. It's like a thousand dollars dollars. Every house $2,000. It's just unbelievable. You know. R410A was another Freon that was new. That's about 150, maybe 200 per pound. The new gas is out now. Like for your guys's homes and stuff would be R32 or R454b. Those are the two newest gases out. Now. What we were using in the past was R22, which was been out for the last 20 or 30 years. We were using that, that got phased out because they said it had too much chlorine in it and that was depleting the ozone faster. So we went from R22 to R410 a now to R32 and R454 b. But the gas okay. I mean just this week alone I probably made like 3 or $4,000 just off of Freon. Okay, I'll put into perspective a can of 410A cost about $200. 250, let's say that's for a 30 pound can. And if you're selling one pound for $200 or $150, I mean it's, it's like the golden era is back. It's like, it's like the gold rush in the summer. It's literally, you cannot stop making money. I sometimes, I almost feel guilty of sometimes. Like me and my brother, we said we used to have a contest every day to see who could get to five grand the fastest. And then it was to be get to five grand. We chill out for the day. You know, by that time it's about 10 o' clock at night, but, you know, or 8 o' clock at night. So it's just. The summertime is just the best. If you're going to get into this trade and you want to make money, you start in the summertime and I guarantee you, you'll never turn back. Winter is a little bit harder. You can make a lot of money in the winter. Don't. Despite the winter oil. We make a lot of money with oil, gas, forced air heating, boilers. It's a lot of money, you know, but the summertime, for me, it just seems like people just cannot live without AC when it's hot, when it's cold, people kind of tend to try to get warmer. They'll snuggle up, they'll get an extra blanket, they'll live for a day or two. But. But a lot of people who have health conditions, a lot of elderly people. I just worked for a lady yesterday. She had a heart condition and there's no way she could live without air conditioning. There's just no way. So, you know, you're wanted. It's a great trade. You're respected. You take pride in fixing things. As a young black person or anyone of color, it's a respectful job. You could feed your family with it. I mean, it has just brought so much joy to my life that I'm. I'm just overwhelmed, you know, with. I try to just bring as much forth to everyone that I can with it because it can change your life. If you just hone in on one thing for one time, I guarantee you it'll, it'll, it'll change your life.
- [66:00]
Rashad
You definitely, you definitely are an essential worker. You talk about the amount of income that you can make. The $5,000 race with you and your brother. I wonder, as an entrepreneur, how are you managing money? Right? Like, you've been doing this for a while now. How, how have you. When you get money for the first time, it's okay, but you've been doing it for a while.
- [66:18]
Vincent Taylor
How.
- [66:19]
Rashad
How has that process been for you?
- [66:20]
Vincent Taylor
Well, you know what? That's a very good question. Because for a while, coming from where I came from with the streets and then going into the business world, I always thought it was just the fact of just stacking money, you know, just stack up the. As much money as you can and this and that. Until you guys really came around, we didn't really know about, like, financing and investing. When Rashad first came to my house, the reason why we went with Rashad, because we were just blown away. Like, he was just so meticulous and on point. To be honest with Shot, I didn't understand a lot what she was saying, but my wife understood the mutuals and this. But we were just so blood blown away. We're like, how is this guy so young and just so militant and like, I mean, you were just so on point that it was just like razor sharp. So, you know, that's just one credit to you. But what was the question?
- [67:15]
Rashad
You were saying how you managing money?
- [67:18]
Vincent Taylor
Okay, so we didn't really know. I didn't really know how to manage money. This is one thing that I'm kind of upset about because I got kind of house stuck, you know, three $4,000 mortgage, kids, college, businesses. I was just so happy to, just to be maintaining on a certain level that I never really got into that point of investing. And then we didn't know how, we didn't know, hey, you know, if you take 20 grand and put it here, it's going to matriculate and it's going to. I didn't see that concept. So I didn't really manage a lot of money well. But I lived a good life and I went through, I learned now, you know, on what to do. But if you're in this trade, like I know a lot of plumbers and guys are in this trade that are doing very well in the stock market because they're able to just do a job for 30 grand and just shove that in the market and then make it back tomorrow or make it back next week. So it doesn't really hurt. So for guys in this trade, it is good, you know, once you understand it, to do a lot of investing because you can make the money so fast, you can make it right back.
- [68:26]
Rashad
How organized you got to be though? Like, I'm thinking now the first deal you got was cash. How often? I mean, I'm pretty sure now it's billing and it's, it's electronics and payment processing.
- [68:36]
Vincent Taylor
Yeah, having that.
- [68:37]
Rashad
How important is having a structure?
- [68:39]
Vincent Taylor
Well, you gotta have your team, you know, you gotta have a good accountant, you gotta have your back office. You know, I'm not that competitive computer literate, so I really depend on my back office a lot. And you start to realize things like, like when I got my first military contract, I was, you know, psyched up. Oh, five grand, ten grand a week, 20. But then when the taxes came on it, I realized like, oh, I might have been paying these guys too much. Like I could have cut back because nobody sees that part at the end, you know, is Taxes. So you gotta really. You gotta really stay organized. You gotta have a focused team. You can't do everything yourself. Once you get to a certain point, you've gotta really pay to put the right people in, you know, in areas to help you. And, you know, I used to. I think I used to use ADP for payroll. Sometimes it's good to. I think they're a good company that used to organize our payroll for us. I mean, I remember even TT was out there helping us a few times. You know, office was crazy, you know, so you got to have a good office crew. You got to have people that are smarter than you, you know, around you to really handle a lot of this business for you. Because, you know, you're out in the field, it's hard to manage both. You really can't do both. Be in the field and be doing everything. No matter what programs you get or things to help you, you need an actual person that, you know, you can guide to, you know, help you, guide you through the process, you know.
- [70:09]
Troy
So I'm glad you mentioned about the women because, you know, I'm building a home right now and my whole painting crew is women. And I was talking to the boss yesterday. She's a music woman. And yeah, definitely pay attention to detail, for sure. But usually you wouldn't expect that from laborers. You know what? You wouldn't expect to see female laborers. So I'm glad you said that because there is a space in, in these trades for women. And that brings me to my question as far as one of the most. I guess the most important thing is hiring employees, right? So how do you go about hiring employees? Are they seasonal workers? Is it like per job? Like, are you having year round? Like, how's that?
- [70:47]
Vincent Taylor
Well, to be honest with you guys, this is what happens in the H vac trade. Because I've been hiring people from about 28 years old till I'm 52 now. So I mean, I've been hiring from all walks of life. Black, white, Asian, grown men, young men. So what I've learned is this. They're going to. It's hard with H Vac because when you hire somebody, you have to almost really look into their soul as far as integrity. Because when you're going from every house, making a couple thousand dollars at every house you go to, it's very hard for another person to look at that and a technician to look at, look at that. And then that's when the resentment comes in and that's when the problems start. So me personally, at this stage in the game, I don't like to hire anybody really over 25 years old. I hire guys from 18 to 25 because a guy from 18 to 25 making a thousand to $2,000 a week, they're on top of the world. But once you get to 30 and into your 40s and you, you start having real life bills, mortgages, kids, could be getting married, divorced, whatever it is, that's when you really need to start making your own money as far as whatever you feel you deserve. Because I could only pay you but so much, and you're going to watch me make so much, and it's not going to make much sense to you after a while. And then that resentment starts to go into the work, and then you're not as nice to customers. It starts to just bleed out into the situation. So I like to stay between that range because a lot of grown men in certain things that you have your grown man problems, but I can't solve them all from my company. I can just pay you what I can. I can't, you know, make all your problems go away. So I noticed that the resentment comes in. If we're the same age and you're working for me and, you know, it's. It's very hard that I've learned a lot of people, people can't really, you know, take it to just stay in their position, stay in their lane and grow as you can, you know. So I like to stay in that range. But you got to look for guys. I mean, I've been through it all. I have guys that were coming on time and just BS all day. I would have guys that would come in late, but they were some of my hardest workers. You know, you just got to kind of look at people and look at their integrity and see, like, are they loyal, are they honest? You know, I'd just rather have a loyal and honest person. If you got to collect $3,000 in cash and you have my truck, van, my keys, my company card, like, I have to be able to trust you with a wide variety of things. We have to almost be a family. I don't like to just hire workers. Once you're working for me, you're in my family, you're coming to Thanksgiving dinner, you're there at Christmas. This is a family thing. So. So I've seen many different techniques and things with hiring people and friends, strangers. You know, some people want to just come to work just for that day, just to make some money. They're not really into the job. You have those types that just need to just make some money. You have some types that are coming just to infiltrate, to figure out how are you getting jobs, you know, and then they'll work for you for a little while, and then, you know, you won't see them again, you know, so there's all different types. And you just have to really look at a person and just see, you know, sometimes you'll hire a person and they have too much problems in their life, too much desperation or, you know, they always got an excuse. You know, let me.
- [74:21]
Troy
Let me ask you this, because this is something that's relevant to the times that we're in, because even I'm building a home. None of my workers are American. The workers that you see that you're hiring or you see from the hiring pool, what's the percentage of them? That's actually great question.
- [74:36]
Vincent Taylor
I say right now because, you know, this trade for a while was locked down with Irish, Italian and Germans. They had it on lock. So right now, the Caribbean people are heavy, heavy in the trades right now. And they're unstoppable. And they're really great Latinos and Hispanic people. You got to understand, all the immigrants are already coming to America with. With the trades, sheet rocking. I mean, they've been doing this since 12 years old, 13 years old. So electrical, you know, they've been doing it for so long that they're just known. See, they're bred with hard work. You know, over here, even though we're hard workers, we don't really understand hard life, you know, so people that can endure a hard life, waking up having to go to the river to get water or do this or that, and they endure that life and they come here, they look at our hard work as like it's kind of a joke to them, you know what I mean? Because the tools and the things that they have to do their work with, we're just so far advanced. It's just like we're, you know, so I see that the immigrants are really. They're going hard with it. You know, they're really. Their work ethic is just so great. You know, they don't want to take breaks. They want to get the job done. You see the progress going on. But definitely Caribbean people, men and women, Latinos, just everyone right now into the. Into the trades or.
- [76:11]
Troy
What about black? What about black people in America?
- [76:14]
Vincent Taylor
Black?
- [76:15]
Troy
What's the percentage you think
- [76:19]
Vincent Taylor
of in the. In the trade? Yeah, there's. There's a. There's a large group of black. I Would say a percentage wise in the trade right now there's probably about 30 or 40%, you know, 50% coming in. There's a lot of black and people of color in the trade. It's just that a lot of people aren't going to the ownership position. You know, they're just stick really. You know, they want to get in the union, work for the union for 28 years and get off easy or this or that. No one thinks that they could do the ownership position because of them being an H Vac tech or being black. I never looked at it like that because see, I was so used to doing big deals with the Ginsburg brothers and developers and things for my sales jobs that, you know, I never had that fear. A lot of people have fear of owning a company because they're going to be looked at as less than or I can't go charge someone $50,000. You know, they're going to look at me like I'm just some. But I've never had that perspective. So that, that never bothered me, you know. But there's a lot of people that the market is flooded right now with. If you go into the supply houses and the companies now, you're seeing more and more and more black and Latino people in there now more than ever. Like if this was 1960s or 70s, we wouldn't even, you know, there wasn't really much out there into the 70s, 80s, a few people were here, but no one was owning companies. I can't think of one black company owner in Westchester. Well, now there's all self Baru, he's a contractor. But that's just up until lately, like growing up, there wasn't there. There wasn't anyone. But now there are a lot more people coming into the contracting and plumbing. There's a lot of black plumbers that are emerging now. A lot of black plumbers and they're doing very well. And you know, H Vac as well. A lot of electricians too now, you know, because that's what it is. The plumbing and the electrician license is a big license. It's a little bit bigger than the H Vac situation. That's why they walk around like they're the big dogs in the room and you can't tell them nothing. And what they say it goes. And I know because they have the license, they went to school for a certain amount of time and they pay like three or four grand just to take that test, you know, depending on what type of plumber or electrician you are. So they're kind of like the heavyweights. But yeah, for the most part, I, to be honest, I mean, I love my, I'm not, you know, I love my race and everything, but I haven't had too many, many black. Just regular American employees, just really, you know, one in few, you know, it's just something. I don't know if it's the work ethic or how they were brought up, but okay, my guy now, I took him from 18, he already had the mentality of a 30 year old, the way that he was brought up. I give him the truck, he's not joy riding, he has a company car. He doesn't spend any extra money, comes to work on time every day. He's helping out his family, he's helping out everyone. He already has the mentality. He doesn't go out, he doesn't drink, he doesn't smoke, he doesn't do anything, he doesn't want to party. He has the mentality of like a grown man, you know, at 18, 20, you know, years old. So it's all where you, you know, your mentality is in your perspective, I think with it. But a lot of people of color are coming into the trade and, you know, not a lot of people are happy about it. But we're here now, you know, it's nothing you could really do about it now. You know, everyone's in the game now. It's like fair game right now.
- [80:04]
Rashad
When you speak, I hear the experience. When you're talking about guys who were joyriding, when you were talking about the. Oh yeah, the idea of hiring from a certain age demographic, there's a lot of experiences there. Talk about some of the, the things that you've seen that you want people to avoid so they don't make the same mistakes. Right? Like your experiences don't have to be relived. What are some of the things to avoid if you're in this space?
- [80:29]
Vincent Taylor
You know, when you're hiring someone, definitely, if you get those guys that aren't humble and they're telling you, yeah, I could do everything I can, I'm the best. This the best of that. Be very careful with that until you've actually seen them do something. You know, that's a lot of mistakes that I made. You know, I used to talk to guys and they used to tell me how great they were and I never really saw anything and I used to go off of that. So definitely, if someone is telling you how great they are, you know, try to see a couple of jobs and a couple of things, I think just sometimes over investing into certain employees or certain things. Things. And then they're having hidden agendas or things like that. You know, I would say, you know, just things like that. I mean, I've done so many different tricks within the company to get money. I mean, I can tell you a story. Once I had a tech, and he had a girlfriend. He was African American tech. He had a white female girlfriend, and she had no job. And I hired her, and I did a marketing scheme. What I did was I sent her out there with him, and I told her, I said, listen, every house you go to, tell them that your father owns the company. And then I ran a contest every week to see who would sell the most maintenances. Every week she brought in $3,500 every week from just telling. Going to a house and saying, my father owns the company. You know, this tech is here to fix your job. She sold 30. I ran a contest every week. I had a bottle of champagne, I had money. Three trucks on the road. Nobody could ever beat her. And she had no h vac experience. You know, so sometimes you got to mix it up. Sometimes you got to do different things. You know, you don't have to run around like, I'm the boss. I'm the owner. You know, I like me, I never do that. I've never, never tell anyone that I own the company. Sometimes customers are like, you know, you're just working too much. Like, usually you own the company. I'm like, you think I'd be out here if I own the company? Like, you know, so I always play the humble role. I always try to just stay in that worker's position and stay humble. But you can mix it up. You can do different things. Like, you don't have to be the face of your company. You can make somebody else project that image for you. And, you know, you could still be in the background. Like, me and my brother, we would have it set up in our phones. I would have his number as my boss in my phone, and he would put me in his. So whenever they would say, hey, call your boss, I would just call my brother. He would pick up, and then he would already know what to tell the customer. So, you know, we never acted like we were the bosses of anything, you know, and you'll never get a tip. So
- [83:18]
Troy
that's insightful, Especially with the. Sending a white girl to the. To the jobs.
- [83:23]
Vincent Taylor
And that's just 3,500 every week. And to the point where the guys were like, vince, we can't beat her. Like, I think they beat her one time, you know, and that was a great way for me to pay the payroll because my payroll was like five grand a week or more. So if. If I put a contest up for them to just sell maintenances, whoever sells the most maintenance is, gets a big surprise. That helped me just to pay payroll too. So that was a good method of just trying to make payroll every week, which I took pride in always making payroll every week, you know. So that was very important to me.
- [83:58]
Troy
Talk about, talk about government contract. You say you like, explain that process of like what you went through, what you had to do, you know, the rfp, talk about that whole thing.
- [84:09]
Vincent Taylor
Well, okay. The government contract, to be honest, came at a point in my life where I was really going through a lot. Family wise and just financially wise. And to be honest with you, I really came to a point where I just got on my knees and I just prayed to God. I was like, God, please, like, help me find a way. Like, I don't know what to do anymore. Like, you know, and to believe it or not, a couple days later, I got a phone call from a weird number. And it was a company that had the contract for all the military bases in New York, in Brooklyn, New Jersey, everywhere. And they asked me, they said, hey, would you think about doing the maintenance for us? And I was like, yeah. And there was like, how many units? They were like, well, it's like 1100 units will give you like, I think it was like 160 per unit. And I just like jumped on it from there. And that lasted for. For a couple of years. It was great money. And then from there I looked into getting my cage number. I got everything certified federally.
- [85:17]
Troy
The cage number. What is that?
- [85:18]
Vincent Taylor
Cage is like, it's like a number that can give you access to like government contracts and things like that. You know, I got my minority business license with that also helped. And I just started. I would have my office just go through every certification for government contracting, federal contracting, on the city level. And we just started going through everything. I mean, I got Con Edison certifications, Con Edison certified. So the more certifications and things really help. But government contracts are so good because they really pay on time. Like Uncle Sam pays on time every week. That money's there, like guaranteed, you know. So that was a really good way of it helped to uplift me back up. Just making like a couple like a hundred thousand or so just off of maintenance. We weren't fixing anything. We were just doing maintenance. And that's Another big thing is that maintenance is a big part of the industry. You don't have to fix anything to actually make money. We make money off of maintenance every single day. You know, I just did a condenser cleaning yesterday for $400, you know, to wash and clean the condenser. You know, that was great money. You know, so maintenance is something that, I mean, you have to do in your home. You have to do periodically to keep your equipment up. So like, especially for, for you guys, like, maintenance is going to be a really big key to preventative maintenance. For you to stop a lot of uncostly costs. You know, you have to do preventative maintenance, changing filters, washing units. Whether it's winter or ac, it plays a very vital part. That could save you a lot. So I, you know, I made a lot of money off of maintenance contracts with them. I didn't really haven't got anything. Okay. Another great thing to get with the government contracts is your 8A certification. Certification. If you can get your 8A certification, which I'm just a couple tax forms away from, that is when the government gives you contracts for no bidding, you will get, I think it's two or four million dollar contracts automatically. So if anyone out there is listening, if you can get your 8A certification for H Vac, that's when you're on your way.
- [87:41]
Troy
Is that, is the eight that's the minority business?
- [87:44]
Vincent Taylor
No, that's the minority business is the MB mmb and then you have the minority women's minority business. No, the 8A certification is A, is a government certification that certifies you to get these big government jobs. But it's no bidding. It's no bidding. Like, oh, you got to put in a bid. They award you a contract for a certain amount of millions, three or four million dollars. And it's whether you could do the work or not, you know, so you have to put in a lot of paperwork. This is another thing, guys. Why you have to have a back office and you have to have females involved. You have to have someone that can do paperwork. I have people that do extensive paperwork that I just cannot fill out, you know, and once you have someone that can master these, these paperworks, then you can get in. They're trying to stop you with the paperwork. You, you know, they're like, okay, you have a chance of a 8A government contract, but you got to do this much paperwork. But if you get it done, then you're in the game. So it's just really doing that paperwork. Sometimes sending in Your tax forms, sending in all your stuff that you have to give them and staying on top of it. And it will work. I mean, other day I got a job from the minority business website. A guy called, called me up, he said, I only want to deal with black businesses. And I went to Brooklyn, I did a big job for him, you know, it was cool. So these things do work. You have to. One thing that they say in sales is if you throw enough shit against the wall, something's going to stick. So you have to just put yourself out there. Like you got to plaster yourself in your neighborhood. Like right now, my neighborhood in Greenberg, I should have my entire neighborhood on lock, like, literally. But I didn't really market my neighborhood because I was trying to go to so many bigger affluent areas, you know, the Scarsdales, the Jerseys, the big areas, you know, because that's really where we make most of our money is in the more affluent areas where you don't really have too much problems. But had I concentrated on my residential middle class area here, I probably could have did a lot better. To. Which I still am, I still am going to do that. But, you know, it's just a great time for the trade, man. It's just great, man. If you're a female, male, you know, it's, it's the time. If you're looking for a second career, if you're looking to retire and you just want to get into the trade and just work on your own, you know, do one job a day, two jobs a day, you're still going to make what you were going to make for the week on a regular.
- [90:20]
Rashad
I actually this Vince, obviously going through the home building process and purchasing a lot of the, the equipment that goes inside that home. What are some of the best systems? Example, we were trying to figure out the water heater situation. I called one of my boys, he's like, navient is a great company. So we went with that for the water heater. What are some of the best systems that you're seeing that you recommend?
- [90:40]
Vincent Taylor
Navion and you have Renai. This is what I've learned over time and a lot of time in the industry. I've installed all of them. Train, Carrier, Goodman, all the brands. Now Carrier started the air conditioning business. Pretty much that was like the only company at the time. So carrier is very big. The high end brands are Carrier train. What does it say? Carrier train. Lennox. Lennox is very big. And all these companies are right here in Westchester too, in Elmsford. So. But what I notice is, is This a lot of the high end brands you could buy, which is great, but if a tech comes to your house and doesn't really have those parts, they're going to be hard to source, they're going to be very expensive and you're going to pay double. A regular brand like a Goodman, which is American made brand, it's a very strong brand. It's all how the equipment is installed and how it's maintained. You know, you don't want to go too low and sometimes you don't have to go too high. It's almost like clothing, like sneakers. It's almost like Nike, Reebok and they're all sneakers and you could wear them and get to the same places. But what do you feel really comfortable in? You know, I mean, you know, it's really hard, I would say, to stick with a good mid level brand and just take care of your equipment. But if you come to me and I say, well, Rashad, Troy, this is the carrier setup for you guys. Carrier is the top brand, they're the top level, this is the price for that. And I say, well this is Goodman. It's the same size, the same tonnage, the same BTUs, it's just a different name. And the parts are on the higher end brands. They're definitely gonna cost you more and they may not have them readily on your truck. You want to get a brand that everyone is comfortable with and parts are easily ready available and they're able to source. You know, a lot of customers go into really high tech German boilers, Baderas boilers and very high tech stuff. And the more high tech you get is the more chances for things to go wrong. If you're going to buy a washing machine right now, it's better. You buy a washing machine with all that computer stuff out of there and get you the one with the turn knob and the knobs that turn and that one's going to last you longer than the ones with all the computers in them.
- [93:18]
Troy
So okay, before we, I got this is an important question. How do you know how to price? Because even for me, like, you know, we bid different contractors and a lot of times, honestly it's like who has the best price in full transparency? Like it'll be like somebody putting in glass. And it's like if this One person is $7,000 cheaper than the other person, that's the determining factor of who I'm going to use. But that doesn't necessarily always mean that that's the best. So I know as a business owner you don't want to race to the bottom, but you also don't want to price yourself out, right? Cause there's always going to be somebody that's going to be cheaper. So you as a business owner, how do you know this is the right price to charge? And I'm a stand on this, or I might negotiate. If somebody wants to negotiate, I might lower it. How do you, how do you determine that?
- [94:04]
Vincent Taylor
Well, there's so many deciding factors. You almost got to be able to read your customer right away. You've got to be able to read the whole situation. You got to be able to read the room, like very, very quickly. Me personally, I mean, Normally we charge 135 an hour to show up, you know, for the hour. My pricing, let me see, like, let's say it's a water heater, right? And it's a water heater job. Water heater costs 1200 bucks or $1000. And you're saying like, I want to charge you now to do this water heater job. I want to charge you 2,500 or close to three grand, you know, and you're like, well, Vince, I can get it for two grand. I think at that point, once I talk to you and I explain to you the situation and I give you the knowledge and the education part side of me where you see that you're getting a vast amount of information and knowledge to where you just start to get so interested in trusting me that I don't think my price is really going to matter at that point. But like, certain things I stand on. Like just because at this point, like let's say a boiler cleaning, if you say clean this for $200, I may not do that anymore because I know that for $400, $600, you're going to get the full deal. You know, you kind of almost get what you pay for in this trade. But I do stand on my, okay, prime example. You just asked that I finally met my first big whale, a developer. Recently, I finally met my first big guy and he asked me to give him a bid for a big swanky Manhattan apartment in the Village. It's not even an apartment. They own the whole floor. Like every apartment owns their own floor. Third floor owns one person, owns the whole third floor, another person. So he asked me to give him a bid. He had seven bids. I gave him a bid on two water cooled units. I gave him a bid for 46,000. He called me back. This guy's been in the business for 40 something years. Big Russian Developer, big guy, he builds buildings in Times Square, everything. He said, vince, I'm gonna tell you something. He said, I've been doing this for a long time. He said, I had seven bids. Everybody came in at 58,000, 57,056. You came in at 46,000. He said, There was another bid that came in for 41,000. I said, why didn't you go with the bid for 41,000? And he said, personally, I could look at people and I could tell whether you know what you're doing or you don't know what you're doing. He said, the bid for 41,000 came in. They were cheaper than you. But he said, I don't trust it my. My heart that they really know what they're doing. He said, I would rather pay you more because I just trust and know that you're going to do the right thing. So that's when I learned, really, the art of value selling. You could sell yourself to a point where it doesn't matter anymore of what the price is or what everything is. People want to be involved with you, and they know that you're going to see the project through. Through. So that taught me a valuable lesson just recently, that you can't be too high and you can't be too low, but you got to also sell yourself with that price. So the guy with the glass who's 7,000, he might. You got to go with your heart reaction. He may not have given you that feel that he's really there, but the guy for 9,000, you might see their setup and be like, nah, you know, they look official and they seem. Seem right. And, you know, I, you know, but when you're just concentrating on just trying to get the cheapest thing, then you're gonna get the. The cheapest thing, you know. So that even taught me a lesson recently. So I'm glad I came in just at the right price. And moreover, he saw the value in me, you know. So I think once you really sell yourself as a person and what you can do and you're talking the right things, things, you're able to connect with people, you know. One thing, I used to always get teased that growing up in high school was the way that I talk, because I talked very proper. And growing up around a lot of my friends and stuff, I used to always get teased. But it has helped me out in the business world to pronunciate and enunciate and to talk with a proper, you
- [98:47]
Troy
know,
- [98:51]
Vincent Taylor
you know, language. Vernacular. Yeah, vernacular, you know, so you Know, that has helped me a lot too. Also. When I call customers on the phone, when I get to the house, they're like, are you the same guy that's on the phone? And I'm like, yeah, you know, it's me. They're like, you sound, you know, but I think that, I think everything plays a part. How you look, how you act, your walk, your talk, your sweat. Customers can smell fear, you know, and once they smell that fear, you're over with. So you have to have that, that, you know, that aura about you that, you know, that savoir faire, you know, that little swag. You gotta have that swag with you.
- [99:33]
Troy
Well, Vince, man, greatly appreciate it. I think that this was extremely insightful conversation. Yeah, you know, it's one of these things, like I said, it's. It was long overdue as far as for us to have a conversation with somebody in the trades. And I'm glad that we was able to have the conversation. You did a great job for Ebol University. So that was, that was like the testing ground to see like, you know, for the big show, like. Nah, you mean.
- [100:01]
Vincent Taylor
Well, I didn't come dressed for the drip report, but, you know.
- [100:04]
Troy
No, no, you actually trust exactly how you. That's, that's actually. If you were to ask me, that's how. Because that's what we're portraying, right? Like you, you got your uniform on. That's smart. So you actually dressed. I was actually just thinking that like you, you dressed exactly how you were supposed to dress for the conversation. Because that's the conversation that we're having. Right. And there's, there's millions of people that's trying to figure it out that might not have went to college, that's struggling, that's trying to. And it's like there's opportunities out here. And like I said, this isn't just us saying it. These are billionaires and corporations. They're saying like in, in the age of AI.
- [100:42]
Rashad
Yeah.
- [100:43]
Troy
One thing that's still going to be here and still going to be thriving is trades.
- [100:47]
Vincent Taylor
Yeah.
- [100:49]
Rashad
There was a huge report with Dario, who's a. The CEO of Anthropic, and they asked him the skills that his company are, are not going to erode. And H Vac was one of them, plumbing was one of them, nursing was one of them. These are in high demand professions that are going to pay well. A lot of the ones that are going to be disrupted and interrupted were high degree professionals, lawyers, some doctors, some health professionals. So this is, this is spot on. And the fact that we know somebody that's from our neighborhood, this is not like, oh, I can't see it. We've seen it happen in our neighborhood. So kudos to you.
- [101:23]
Vincent Taylor
Thank you so much, man. I appreciate that.
- [101:26]
Troy
And I'll just, you know, I actually. So I had this whole thing planned out because I wanted to see how you did on UI University. Just because somebody's a good at what they do, what I learned, that doesn't mean they can communicate what they do.
- [101:38]
Vincent Taylor
Yeah.
- [101:39]
Troy
And that's two different things. And there's nothing wrong with that. Everybody's not made to actually communicate publicly. That's fine. But it's always great when you can communicate publicly involved. So I wanted to see what you did on EY University. You passed that test. And then, and then that was like the gateway to earn your leisure. But I did save a spot if you're interested this year for Invest Fest. Definitely want to have a conversation about the trades. So if you're interested, you know, we'd love to have you out.
- [102:12]
Vincent Taylor
Just going to say, you know, Invest Fest needs a little blue collar action, you know.
- [102:19]
Troy
Absolutely.
- [102:19]
Vincent Taylor
We don't want to scare away the blue collar guys because, you know, they think, you know, it's big business. But you know, we're here, you know, we need to have them feel comfortable. Especially in Atlanta, man. I mean, all the H Vac guys and the trade guys that are out there, carpenters, just construction guys, everybody, like, you know, they would like to feel a little bit warm there too. You know, not the big stage. Not the big stage. But you know, if we can get on any, you know, little small stages, that's a, you know, small stages.
- [102:51]
Rashad
There's no small stages here. There's only big stages. And that's why it's a important. So what I'm saying is now is like once they see this episode and they see you, I just hope you're prepared for non stop questioning because people are going to be so inquisitive.
- [103:05]
Vincent Taylor
Yes.
- [103:05]
Rashad
Because now they see somebody that looks like them, especially us indies. And yeah, we need to see somebody that's doing it at a high level, man.
- [103:12]
Vincent Taylor
So again, super proud. I would love to be there, man. Just let me know, I'll, I'll be there. And I would love to talk to them and I would love to inspire the next person because someone's gonna get inspired, inspired. And someone's going to do it. Someone's going to say, okay, I'm going to follow the process and get it done. And if they need help. I'm here, you know, I'm in the helping process of my stage, with my career. It's not that much. So, you know, I just want to see somebody else do it, you know, somebody else like the black sheep of the family, the people who've been in jail or drug abuse or you've had that checkered past. I want those people to just hone in and just say, I'm going to show everybody. I'm going to be that person that's going to break the mold. And, you know, I'm going to show them that I could do it. I could buy a house, I could do. I could live that American dream, you know, I know it's there for everybody. It's just finding that path to the income, you know. So what's your.
- [104:09]
Troy
What's. What's your Instagram?
- [104:11]
Vincent Taylor
What's the website?
- [104:12]
Troy
What's all of that information?
- [104:13]
Vincent Taylor
My Instagram is. Vincent Underscore. Underscore. Taylor Underscore. H VAC Services. You'll see me under. Basically, Vincent Taylor, H VAC Services. I'm on. There. On. On Instagram. That's pretty much mostly what I use. I don't really use too much websites or anything, but I'm on Instagram mostly. You can see me on Facebook, too,
- [104:37]
Troy
as well, if somebody wants to hire you. Like, what's the area that you cover?
- [104:43]
Vincent Taylor
Well, I'm licensed for New Jersey and Westchester. I also have some licensing in Connecticut. I pretty much cover everywhere that, you know, I can go to to help you or if you have licenses for that area.
- [104:57]
Troy
Tri State. Tri State area.
- [104:58]
Vincent Taylor
Yeah, Tri State area. Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Westchester, you know. Yeah, Tri State area.
- [105:07]
Rashad
We gotta make sure you lock down Greenberg now.
- [105:09]
Vincent Taylor
Yeah.
- [105:09]
Troy
Do you want me to tell the Halloween story or no?
- [105:12]
Vincent Taylor
Oh, man. Rashad, this guy. Can we have a positive note, Rashad? I don't know what happened with that Halloween thing, but, bro, it's all good.
- [105:23]
Rashad
Some things you can't let go.
- [105:26]
Vincent Taylor
It's all love, but it's all good.
- [105:29]
Troy
It's all good.
- [105:30]
Vincent Taylor
Glad to see you doing great. And, you know, you know what? I want to say congratulations on the green jackets. It was actually two, so. Troy, I'm telling you this, Rashad, there's a Jamaican saying, good friends are better than pocket money. And you got a good friend right there. So, you know, definitely kudos to you. I still got a jeans jacket, but I'm trying to get you there by investments.
- [105:56]
Rashad
We're going to get you there.
- [105:56]
Vincent Taylor
I'm gonna get the green jacket, jacket.
- [105:59]
Rashad
In?
- [106:00]
Vincent Taylor
Oh, the jean jacket. It's just a blue collar jacket. You know, I'm still blue collar, but I'm getting there.
- [106:06]
Rashad
All right, perfect, Perfect.
- [106:10]
Troy
I appreciate it, man. Definitely insightful conversation. I'm glad that, you know, we had the conversation and. Yeah, man. See you at Invest Fest.
- [106:19]
Vincent Taylor
Definitely. All right, bro. Appreciate you.
- [106:22]
Troy
All right, guys.
- [106:24]
Rashad
Well, another one that was.
- [106:26]
Troy
That's been real. Okay, we'll see you guys next week.
- [106:29]
Rashad
Peace.
- [106:31]
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