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- [00:01]
Mail Shark
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- [01:04]
J. Moneymaker
This is H Vac Masters of the Hustle with your host, J. Money Maker. Yeah, I'm a hustler Cuz I'm a hustler yeah, I'm a hustler.
- [01:38]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Woo.
- [01:39]
J. Moneymaker
What is up? You are listening to H Vac Masters of the Hustle podcast and here's your host, J. Moneymaker. And welcome to episode 315. And first off, I just got to say this podcast, as you all know, I believe we all have a Spartan in us. And it is my job, my duty, and my obligation to bring that beast out. And we have a very, very exciting podcast episode that we're going to be going live here in a second. But before we get, you know, really deep into this episode, I just want to let you all know, you got to share it, okay? You got to be involved. We're going live. And this podcast is brought to you by Mel Shark. Mail Shark is something that we've been using at Royalty Heating and Air. And it's been really helping us to not just dominate the market, because in order to dominate the market, you got to dominate what a neighborhood at a time. So what it's doing, it's allowing us to make sure that we have the correct demographics and the factual information of where to mail those information cards out. And, and if you guys have any information or you want to know any information about that, you could reach out to jdub@h vacmastersofthehustle.com as well as Nuva Thermostat, the thermostat made by the contractor for the contractor brand awareness right there on the thermostat as well as customizations. I just gotta say, what other thermostat out there has a disco light on it, right? But no, on the real side of everything, y'. All. I'm super excited to, to get really deep into this podcast because I know a lot of you out there are going into summer. We are in summer, and this might be your first summer. You might have taken the opportunity to, you know, face that fear and leave whatever company and said, you know what, I'm gonna try my own thing and see what happens. Right. I have a bigger dream, I have a bigger vision. And who better to have a guest on the podcast Other than Mr. Wyatt Hedsworth, the owner of Any hour. I just gotta say, first off, absolute honor. I love always having you on the podcast because you're just a wealth of knowledge, a wealth of information, and what you've been able to create. You know, one of the biggest companies within the nation, probably within the world, I would say that does trades of H Vac, I mean, just absolutely outstanding. And I'm excited to dive really deep and talk about obstacles and challenges and culture and really what you did to create something special today. So, Mr. Wyatt, thank you for being a guest.
- [04:39]
Wyatt Hedsworth
You're welcome. Glad to be here. I, I love that introduction. You know, I, I, I get jazzed every time I, I watch your podcast. You know, even, even that startup music, you know, it's all, all about the hustle.
- [04:51]
J. Moneymaker
It's all about the hustle, right? Absolutely. And, you know, it's been a, probably about a year and a half since you and I have seen each other. You, you know, allowed H vac Masters of the hustle, our team to come and we did something actually really special on site. We had, I think, about 100 contractors across the nation come to do shop tours as well as a two day or a day seminar. And man, I gotta say, your team, what I got to experience the culture. Right? There's no, you know, we see social media and people see from the far, but they don't understand. So I just gotta say before we dive in deep on this, talk about culture real quick and the importance of your culture within your team.
- [05:39]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Yeah, it's, it's really everything. And you know, so many people say it's everything. You know, I've had people, you know, I talk about how our people are more important than anything, and a lot of people say, oh yeah, that's absolutely needed and a must do is you got to take care of your people. They got to be number one. And then they get talking about the revenue and then they get talking about why their people aren't good enough and why this guy's not good enough and that One's not good enough. And this and that and this and that. And then they say, yeah, but I care about my people. And, and I say, and I say, and I say, and I say, bull crap. They don't care about the people. They care about what the people are doing for them. Jason, if you don't mind me just starting off by saying that, I think a lot of people don't actually care about the people. They care about what the revenue is happening from their people. You know, do you. What I actually believe, Jason, is you hire the bet the best people you can. But Jason, can you get all A players on your team? I mean, how hard is that to get a bunch of A players?
- [06:42]
J. Moneymaker
Oh, that's extremely hard. Extremely hard. The average team, I say, has probably C plus players.
- [06:48]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Okay, so great. How do you get them C and B players? And you're going to have some A's, but how do you get some CMBS? Get rid of the DNFs. Don't hire, don't even, don't even hire the DNFs. Try to, you know, and that's really what I'd like to dive into. Jason, right off you bring up culture. I want to dive into this, if you don't mind.
- [07:10]
J. Moneymaker
Absolutely.
- [07:13]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Culture's not hiring up a bunch of people for busy season and then laying them all off for slow season and hiring them back up and then laying them all off actually hiring under hiring. So you can take care of those C plus players and then put the time into them that you can help a C player, elevate them and help them become a B player. Help a B player become an A player. If you have some D players you think have potentials, potential to be a C and a B, quickly put the, you know, put the time into that person and see if you can get them to a C and a B. But try not to hire DNFs altogether. If you inherit a company or a management position where you have a bunch of D's and F's, you might, you might find you have some guys that can jump to a C and a B pretty quick or let some of those DNFs go. But I just see so many times people, they're over hiring when they have all this work. You, you, you, you've been in the industry for how many years, Jason?
- [08:15]
J. Moneymaker
15 years.
- [08:17]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Like, it's always too busy in this. In certain.
- [08:19]
J. Moneymaker
Oh, yeah, right. Yep. And, and then when it's slow, you know, that's when they cut them and that's what I always say is you can't. And being a new company, I'm talking of royalty right now, is. That's something. I had to gear up for summer, but I had to gear myself up in the right position where I knew I wasn't going to be laying anyone off. So I geared myself up, I went through my numbers. I knew what I needed to attract and the numbers that I needed to bring on with the talent, and we had to make it happen. But I didn't want to over hire because I had to understand and foresee Summer. Okay. When it's not as busy. And what I had to do also was understand that maybe I bring on three or four guys, couple office staffs, but that's it till the end of the year. And you have to dis. Discipline yourself as well.
- [09:17]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Yes. You really have to discipline yourself. Yes. Do you. Are you doing the hiring for your company or who's doing the hiring for your company?
- [09:25]
J. Moneymaker
So right now we got a kind of a section. I. I kind of follow your protocol, actually, or I shouldn't say your protocol. You guys highlighted a lot of things when we were out there. And so when we built our. Our attachment and everything, I wanted to make it attractive. So what we do is we do a. A walkthrough first. And one thing that I learned when I was in your guys's walkthrough was someone was in an interview, and I believe you or someone had made them wait for a good 30 minutes or 45 minutes, but it was a test. And the test was to see if they were patient. And I forget who it was that said it, but at the end of the day, the person wasn't patient. They ended up leaving and walking away. And it was someone that had extremely good talent or something like that. But obviously your ego is not your amigo. Right. That's something that Joe Chrisra says. So what we like to do is we start off with the interview. We'll bring them in, we'll do a tour of the shop and everything like that. We also do a personality test. Then they'll meet with Ms. Billy. Ms. Billy will go through an interview with them with the color test and everything like that to see what their personality is. And then if they move forward from there, then it would go to myself, and then we would make a decision as a team.
- [10:59]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Awesome. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. So we. We grew the business to $2 million. And I was not involved with the hiring back then, and I didn't. Didn't really. We hit 2008, and some things had to change to get through that. And I didn't really like the way the company looked. And so I decided I was going to. No one was going to get hired without me being involved. So, Jason, from 2 million to 35 million, I was involved with almost one or two people got hired without going through me, if at all.
- [11:33]
J. Moneymaker
I think everything slipped through. Huh.
- [11:35]
Wyatt Hedsworth
I. If anybody, maybe one or two. From 2 million to 35, but it would have been even a text message to myself. So anyway, you bring up that patience thing.
- [11:46]
J. Moneymaker
Yeah.
- [11:47]
Wyatt Hedsworth
When I was involved with it, I wouldn't intentionally make people wait, but I just would make sure that they knew because I wasn't doing the initial interview like you were just mentioning someone's doing that in the company that believes in the company. So as they toured them around the place and got them sold on the business, if they didn't have the patience to, like, wait, wait it out, we knew they weren't going to have the patience to sit in front of a customer and take them through the whole process. Because it's not as, you know, because you teach this right, Jason, you don't go on the customer, slap a price down, expect to get the job, do the job. It's a. It's a. It's a bring the customer along. And so everything you're teaching all your, you know, all the people that, that you're teaching with your training and with your programs, if they don't have the patience to even go through our interview process, they're not going to have the patience to do what we need them to do. Now, I understand hard work, hustle, all those things. So, so. But we. But there's also communication.
- [12:44]
J. Moneymaker
Communication is key in a business operation.
- [12:47]
Wyatt Hedsworth
So part of that communication, Jason, is not saying, hey, you're just going to be waiting here, but say, saying, hey, we're going to take you through this interview process. We interview, and we only hire one or two out of 20 people that we. We actually interview. So. So we're going to take you on tour. We want you to really understand our business. We want you to understand the whole process. And at the end of this, you know, we're going to decide if this. You're going to decide you want a second interview, and we're going to decide if we would like you to do a second interview and go from there. And then that's where I would then come in and meet with them. And sometimes we knew we had a good one there, Jason, where, you know, the right guys like you can tell some of these guys, you know, you gotta hire them, but if you, if you make it too easy to get in, it's easy come, easy go. So, so anyway, so, so I wouldn't say we actually had them just sit in a corner for, to waste their time, but we definitely, what we actually do, Jason, is we want to try to get all the people out that we know we're not going to hire, get them out as fast as we can so we're not wasting their time and then try to get that other person to the one or two we think we could hire. Get them, get them taking the color code test, get, get them maybe with another manager, try to get them into a training so they can sit at the back, kind of see a little more of what we're about. We're not trying to waste their time. But also, but even those right guys that you know are going to do good things for the business. You don't want to hire a guy that's going to be there three months, six months, nine months, and then bolt in and out. Right, Jason? So, so we're going to put a lot of time into these guys. So, so we did get, I wouldn't say we were making them wait to try to test them on that, but we knew we wanted to get everybody else out so we could spend some time with that person, really fine tune it, make sure they were really right for the business and we didn't want them walking out. But, but yeah, good, good point. It ends up being. And they have to wait there a little bit. Right.
- [14:35]
J. Moneymaker
I don't, I don't know who, I don't know who told me that story, but I, I remember, but one thing that I saw on the Internet the other day that I thought was really cool was y' all run promotions during summer, during urgency, and a lot of companies stop running promotions. Okay. But one of the promotions that you're doing is absolutely dominating and controlling the market of what you're doing because no one else could do it. It's separating yourself. And I actually didn't know. I thought it was just giving one H Vac system away. And you were telling me that your coolest summer. What is it? The coolest summer's suit. Yes.
- [15:25]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Yeah. So we are giving away a free system every single week.
- [15:30]
J. Moneymaker
Every week.
- [15:31]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Every week. Yeah. And yeah, so we're, we're putting that out there and we're getting a lot of great response and we truly are giving out a system. So now some of these customers are choosing to do a system with us right now. If they win that, we're gonna actually refund them all that money with a check. If they, if they chose not to do it with us, then we're gonna go out and we're gonna do the system for them.
- [15:57]
J. Moneymaker
For who thought of them.
- [15:59]
Wyatt Hedsworth
You know, that's Mike Wilson. He's our marketing cmo. He's actually been with the business for years. And, and you know what our slogan is? Our motto is, our slogan, whatever you want to call it, is, no one helps more customers than any hour. And how do you show the public that we really mean that? And we figured, you know what, we can actually give a unit away. At our size of business, we can give a unit away every single week. And so how can we set ourselves apart from another competition, but to give back to our community, no strings really attached, it's about truly serving and helping our local customers. And, you know, and we are the biggest company in the area. But, you know, fast rewind. Fifteen years ago, we were one of the smallest companies, you know, around. In fact, 15 years ago, we were just a straight. I think, yeah, 15 years ago, we were just starting up heating and air and plumbing, and we were just an electrical company back then. So 15 years from, you know, back in 2010, we started that plumbing and heating and air side and went from being one of the smallest companies in our area to absolutely by far the biggest company in our area. And we did that by Jason, by putting the customer first. And so we have a lot of return customers. We've got a lot of great customers that are very loyal to us. And so we thought, how can we give back to our community? How can we, you know, really give back? And one system per week, we're able to do that and show the public that we're really here to help. And the byproduct of that is, you know, we are gaining more clients, we're getting more customers, and our employees see that we really are giving back. And it's not about the revenue or the money, but it's really about taking care of the customers and taking care of our community and not burning and churning through them. And you cannot grow this big with and burn insurance through people. I mean, you can be a 15, 20, 25 employee company, but you can't be a 4 or 500 employee location in a community and burn insurance for your customers. You're going to run out of customers, right?
- [18:10]
J. Moneymaker
Yeah. No, you're 100% on that now. How are your clients and community applying for this to be a part of it.
- [18:21]
Wyatt Hedsworth
That's a really good question. You're going to have to get Mike Wilson on your podcast to have him go over all the detail. But, okay, but yeah, it's, it's easy to enter. I believe they just go online and they just enter the name in and, and answer a few questions. And of course, then, then our marketing team is able to see, you know, are they a current customer or they, are they a new, New potential customer? You know, and, and also by them contacting us, it does give us permission to market to them. Does that make sense? Mike Wilson has a lot of email marketing, a lot of really inexpensive ways through, through marketing that he, that he, that they can subscribe into by getting into this program. So, so it's been a great, it's been a great bang for the buck because as you know, as these kind of businesses, I don't care what size your business is, you're putting money into marketing. So, so this is just a way to make sure that money is going directly to our consumer. Instead of a, instead of a marketing agency that's going to be getting the money to put billboards up or to put direct mailers out or the good old, you know, Google that likes to really take our money really fast. We'd rather that money go right to the customer. So we get their information, they're agreed to us letting them know some things about our business, and we're able to see if they're a current customer or a potential new customer. It's pretty, pretty awesome, actually.
- [19:46]
J. Moneymaker
Why? How often are you guys doing things within the community and what are some other things that you have done in the past?
- [19:54]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Yeah. Yes. And above and beyond this, we're always trying to find ways to help, to help customers and help the community out. You know, we don't flaunt all the things we do. One of the things that just happened that very few people even know about is somebody had been out of water for about a month, a potential customer, and they could not afford to do our services. And so we actually, I'll just say I'm not one to really flaunt things, but I personally, out of my own pocket, pay for them to get a new water heater. What was really cool is I got a hold of the manufacturer. I got a hold of our manufacturer, Joe. Joe is with the standard, and Joe's been working with us as our rep for, for, I don't know, probably 15 years, actually.
- [20:45]
J. Moneymaker
Shout out Joe.
- [20:46]
Wyatt Hedsworth
You know, Joe, 13, 14 years. Joe's pretty cool, dude. But the water heater, he had to pull a lot of strings. But the water heater was under. Under warranty. It was a 75 gallon. We were able to get that water heater and I paid for the labor out of my own pocket. And. And I did that anonymously. So you're the first to actually find out about that. But you're asking, so. So I paid for that out of my own pocket. But then there's also programs where the different techs can come back to a manager and we can help a certain amount of people, and we keep that in our budget to be able to help a certain amount of people. But again, we have managers that will chip in on that situation. I paid for that. But we also had the service manager, and he didn't even know it was me. He actually made sure he was the one that bid the job. So there wasn't any commission on that. That would have made the price higher. Does that make sense? So. But yeah, so we're always doing those things. We're obviously in parades where we're in the community being seen in parades, but we try to do a lot of things, Jason, under the radar, where we're changing out units or a real needy family that really can't afford the services. We're doing some of those things. We just don't publicize that. We don't try to get it on.
- [22:05]
J. Moneymaker
On the news, air and news. And we just, we just don't.
- [22:08]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Don't do that. There's just a lot we do behind the scenes that. And I. I just feel like, you know, I just feel like, you know, our people know we do those things and that's. That's good enough. We don't need to blast it.
- [22:20]
J. Moneymaker
Absolutely. Right now I want to bring you back to. You're talking about, I think 15 years ago, you guys started the company, started.
- [22:31]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Plumbing and heating and area.
- [22:32]
J. Moneymaker
Okay. Now let me bring you back to year one, okay. Because a lot of people, as I was saying in the beginning of this episode, this might be their first venture. And as you know, year one, you hit the wall quite a bit. Right. And there's a lot of failures and obstacles and challenges, and you feel like, you know, that you can't. You're climbing this wall and you can't get out. What do you say to the companies out there, if you could go back from today to year one or day one in the truck to yourself, what advice would you give?
- [23:12]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Yeah, so. So we're going to day one. I was 21 years old, we had no employees. And I would have told myself, I would have told myself many things. First off, I would have told myself, you're going to be successful, Wyatt. Just don't stop. Don't stop working and you will be successful. I wish I could have told myself that back then. That would have taken away a lot of anxiety. Sam Walton says, high expectations are everything. That's how I live my life. I expect a ton out of myself. And I wish I would have told myself along with those high expectations that I would be a success if I just continue to work hard, which I did and wish I continue to do to this day. So that'd be number one. Number two, I'm glad I did the things I did. Let me say this. When I had extra money, I paid debt off, Jason. I lived within my means. I cared about what the competition was doing, but I didn't care so much that I made bad mistakes to try to keep up with competition. I said, I'm one guy. Then becoming 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, not in one year, but over a three year period. I didn't have to be 20 people in one year. 20 people in three years. This is the thing, Jason. You have all these people listen to this podcast. They might be in a business that's 20 employees if they leave that company and start a business. They're not. If they think they're going to be 20 employees in a year or two, they're setting themselves up for failure or for taking too much risk. Our employees expect they're not risk takers. They're not doing this to get rich quick, that are not taking risks with their future and their ability so they know they can put full effort into their job. Taking care of the customer, taking care of the install. If they're installers, I'm going to do installs every day and I know my pay is going to be solid and good and not change. And I'm not going to get all these things ripped out from under me. And they got to trust that that owner and their management are making good decisions and growing a little bit every year. Not worrying about all the competition, but being aware of the competition and staying within their means and having a safe, secure environment to grow their career. Otherwise they should just leave and go take all those risks themselves because they're basically going to get hosed in that anyway. And I don't believe these employees come work for a business to get hosed. So that's what I did. And I wish I could have told myself that. But I, but I, but I, but I did live by that, by the way, I did live by that. We started up in2010. The plumbing and the heating and air conditioning side. And we didn't just blow that side up. It was getting, getting those B play, those A and B players on the team. I didn't go look for C's, D's and F's. I got Dustin Van Arman, I got Kevin Van Orman. You know, I got Mark Rich. There were guys I knew, worked hard, that I worked next to when I was an electrician in the field. They did heating and air. I went and found two master plumbers that I knew. They worked hard. That's who I brought in. I'm not a plumber. And I brought in good solid foundation to grow on. I had to pay them more, Jason. That meant I didn't make as much. I made, I didn't make a paycheck for two and a half years. When I started plumbing and heating air, my current manager, Jerry Hansen was with me. He was not my partner yet. And he said, and he was like, you're starting up two trains. That's gonna be expensive. And I said, I know I'm not going to make a paycheck till they're profitable. It took two and a half years. And so. But we used our current 2 million electrical data database to grow that off of Jason. And so if someone's starting and thinking they can grow that as fast as I did with any hour, they're not going to do it. And, but within four years, we were, we were literally right where at the top we were one of the bigger companies in the state. Within four or five years, literally we were 15, 20 million. And then it just shot up from there up to, you know, any hour itself. Counting our Phoenix location, Ogden area, Salt Lake area area, Utah county area, I mean, we're probably $140 million company. And in the 15 year period, but that did not happen overnight. That is 15 years of every year growing it intentionally and not, not and putting time and effort and training because you've trained our guys putting training into, not CDs and Fs but, but Bs and A's or even Cs that we saw potential that we could turn them into B's and A's right through training and all the things that you are able to do out there. And I know you have tons of stories of people that were probably season Ds, even owners that you've seen become Some pretty phenomenal people with your training, right?
- [28:13]
J. Moneymaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, one thing that I want to talk about right now is something that you mentioned. Not paying yourself the first two years. You know, business owners, you know, unfortunately, I think go into business sometimes with the mindset that they're going to make all this money. Right. And, you know, talking about you not paying yourself, you know, royalty. We've been in business now. We just hit a year in June. I haven't taken a paycheck. We've grown to 12 employees now. I haven't paid myself. And it's the sacrifice, right? I always tell everyone, you have to be willing to sacrifice today in order to live the life you want to tomorrow. You have to understand that. And I think that's where a lot of business owners fail as well, is that they want to take from the company instead of pour into the company. Talk about that real quick.
- [29:07]
Wyatt Hedsworth
I would like to. And I want to make it very clear, there were only a select few people that knew that I was not getting paid for two and a half years. Just a very few. Because as an owner, if I walk around and say, I'm not getting paid, I'm not getting paid, I'm just getting a paycheck. Well, that's not really the right attitude.
- [29:24]
J. Moneymaker
No.
- [29:25]
Wyatt Hedsworth
I walked around and worked my freaking butt off. Acted like those sides, minor. I didn't go around saying we're profitable or not profitable. I just talked about revenue. Now, our electrical side was 20% profitable when I started those, Jason. So it's not like I was running a mediocre electrical side. It was 20 plus percent profitable. Okay. So it could sustain putting that money into that extra. Also, I raised our marketing to 26% for the whole entire business. Got it. I said, we are going to intentionally grow. But I didn't, I didn't even tell people. I raised it to 26%. I didn't tell anybody. I didn't need to. My. My marketer knew. The management knew. We kept it quiet. We didn't go. I didn't even tell most of my managers at the time, which was just a couple. I didn't even tell. Only Jeremy knew. I didn't. Wasn't getting paid. Got it. So, so, so here I'm not getting paid. But I, I still gave to people. We get all this marketing. It's like, holy cow, look at all these calls. We had so many calls. I had buddies that actually owned heating and air conditioning companies. I was just sending calls over to them. I made a deal with them. Before I even turned it on, said, hey, I'm going to be sending like one of them was. They've been. So they've been sold that well, I probably shouldn't name their names, but anyway, I was, I was just funneling calls over to them and they're like, this is a pretty good gig. They got a little upset at me. Once I, we grew big enough that I had enough employees, I wouldn't set up calls. They're like, we were really enjoying these guys. But, but, but I really just kind of set it up that if we're gonna advertise, I didn't want to just tell people we couldn't use them. So I was sending them to pretty good companies. And I know that maybe that's not a good plan, but I think it told our employees I cared more about the customer than money. I cared more about them and growing them than to over hire. I cared more about what we were building than the. And I think that's the big thing is. And then I was giving back. Even though I wasn't making money, wasn't taking a paycheck, the question is, how did I do that? Well, I'd made enough money, Jason, that I, I could live off my savings easily. Got it. So I had been successful enough that I could do that. So I didn't walk around like the sky was falling. And I knew we were going to be profitable at some point. And I'd made that commitment to Jeremy that I wasn't going to take a paycheck till it was. And so it took a little longer than I thought it was going to take. But when you're putting 26% back in marketing, I mean.
- [31:50]
J. Moneymaker
Oh, yeah, you're dumping, you're dumping some money in there for sure.
- [31:53]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Yeah. And marketing budget right now for our whole entire company. That's a half billion, you know, Half billion. ISH company. 30 locations. You know, we're, we're, we're probably closer to the 6, 6, 7%.
- [32:05]
J. Moneymaker
So.
- [32:06]
Wyatt Hedsworth
So you can, you can tell that 26% was completely given away. 20% of our profit right there, right?
- [32:13]
J. Moneymaker
Yeah. And, and again, marketing is a, it's a risk. Right. A lot of times you don't know how it's going to react or what it's going to happen. Now let me ask you, talking about marketing right now, what do you feel like in all the years experience that you've been doing this, that the right marketing's done for you? I know all different markets and everything like that, but what do you feel like is like a good solid. Like, if I had this, this is what I would do.
- [32:43]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Meaning percentage of revenue back.
- [32:49]
J. Moneymaker
Type of marketing.
- [32:51]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Yeah, you know, it's really changed over the years. Believe it or not, phone books back 15 years ago were going out. Right. We were able to go in back then and we were able to actually double down and triple down on phone books. And we were able to, because they were going out, we were able to negotiate very good rates, pop and get top spots throughout the whole book and really saturated that book and maximized every single book. I would not recommend that right now. We were some of the first early movers to get into Facebook when Facebook was really happening social media. Mike Wilson was a big fan of Gary Vaynerchuk. Loved the guy to pieces. We actually became his first client doing heating and air conditioning and with the Sasha program. So he took a lot of interest in our business and helped us out. Now Facebook and all that saturated. So also everybody's copying any of the big companies they're copying. So we always tried to find the things that our competitor. When we're smaller, Jason, we tried to find the things our competitors were not willing to do. And what we found out is there was this thing called tune ups maintenance that people think highly of themselves on, and they weren't willing to do it for less than 79, 89, 99, $129. So we were, we were the company that came in. I'm just gonna take the credit right here. We come in with a $29 tune up. 15, 16. Right. About 15 years ago, before anyone was doing that. And we just, we hit that hard. Our competitors didn't know what to do. They were at minimum 79 to 99. And they're like, we got me money doing that. And so our philosophy is give, give, give, give, give. And so we would, we would send real people like Dustin Van Orman full on technician Kevin Van Ormond. Guys have been doing heating and air for 15 years. We were sending qualified guys out to do tune ups. Now, you know, we weren't making money doing tune ups, but we were winning customers over. And that was. And like I said, I'd rather the customer get a great experience than to pay money into marketing. So what is our best marketing? Hey, doing a $29 tune up and doing it better than the guy doing $100 tune up. And then the customer says, oh my gosh, I just paid 29 bucks to get this. You're my company. Like, you didn't try to sell me something you're my company. We don't go in and try to sell a unit. We go in and take care of the customer. Now that we've grown the company to the size we are, we're able to hire guys, get them through a two month, three month program. They can be the tune up technicians and go wow the customer and do an awesome job. And we're not paying those guys 30 plus bucks an hour. We're paying those guys 15 to 20 bucks an hour and. But it's not a burn insurance or a way to flip it, Jason. It's not, it's a how do you wow the customer so much? That's the best marketing you can get. You know what Home Depot would pay to get in people's homes and actually be in front of? You know what Google and any of them would do to pay to be right in front of. We get to be in people's homes every single day.
- [35:55]
J. Moneymaker
Preach it, Wyatt.
- [35:56]
Wyatt Hedsworth
We've got technicians running one to three, four calls a day. They're in homes. How do you get the customer so excited about your people? How do you have your people so excited about your business? How do you have your managers so excited about your people and your customers? How do you have ownership not about the money, but about taking care of people? The money will come. Look at Walmart, one of the most successful businesses in the world. They didn't do it by being the high priced company. They didn't do it by taking advantage of customers. They did it because they just people now. You know, imagine Sam Walton being alive today. He probably wanted a lot more customer service to be at the front desk. But imagine how that place was 20 years ago when he run it. The thing grew because of the high expectations and taking care of customers day in and day out, right?
- [36:47]
J. Moneymaker
Love it, love it. I mean, you're dropping absolute knowledge, you know. As we're wrapping the podcast, I got listeners from business owners, sales professionals, technicians, dispatchers. What would you like for them to get out of this episode of H VAC Masters of the Hustle.
- [37:03]
Wyatt Hedsworth
You matter if you're a dispatcher. You matter. Be the best dispatcher you can be. If you're the best dispatcher, your technicians are going to be successful, your customers are going to get taken care of. It's stressful. That's one of the most stressful jobs out there. Be the best you can be at it and you will go places, you be valued. And same with customer care. If you're a customer care, you know, take care of the customer Take care of those people in front of you. I really believe the number one customer is the person right in front of you. And so, Jason, right now, you're number one. Your audience is. Is number one to you, correct?
- [37:42]
J. Moneymaker
Yes, sir.
- [37:43]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Like that's number one for you. You're not on your phone checking emails right now. You're not, you know, checking Facebook. You're. You're trying to deliver for your custom. For your people, for the people that. Taking the time to listen to this podcast. So that's really. My message is, is take care of the person in front of you. Live in the moment. Don't be when, if you're a technician, you're taking care of that customer right in front of you, you're not worrying about what's happening at home. And that's really the key to the success of any hour in this business is the emphasis on taking care of the person in front of you. If you're a manager, it's the technician, the ccr, the dispatcher, the person right in front of you. It's not all those other things. You know, I see so many businesses where the management isolate themselves from the field. You. You win on the front line. If your people on the front line are winning, you're going to win. If your people on the front line are not winning, you're not going to win. You're never going to win. I don't care how big the business is, 1,000 employees, 10,000 employees, two employees. You've got to make sure those two employees are winning. What I like to tell myself is, you got to make sure these people win. I wish I would have known that, you know, 30 years ago. I did find that out 15, 16 years ago, though, Jason, when I started being the one that would interview people that come in here to work with me, I got to start finding out from them what, why they were leaving their other jobs. I got to find out all the things. And then as they talked with me about all the things they hated at their last job, I thought, is my job that same way? And the answer was back then, some things were. And then I got to think, how do I fix those things? And I'd ask them, how would you fix those things? And I got to learn from those people. And they didn't even realize I was learning from them. And I'm still learning, Jason. I still learn. So I'm still very involved with the business, still very involved with the group. We've got a phenomenal team. Just put in a news CEO about six months Ago. Mike Irby, he's been with, with me for a bit for a while. He was our CSO before that. Mike Irby's fantastic CEO. He's running the whole group now. We've got Jeremy Hanson who's been with me for 17 years. He's the CSO now. So he took that, that spot. When Mike Kirby moved into CEO. We just brought in, you know, someone that's been working in the services for a lot of years, bringing in some great talent. We've got Dustin Van Norman who you know very well, who's helping us with the, with the, with the, with the expansion nationally in his role. We just got some great people. And you know what's really cool is these people, Jason, that I was hiring. This is what people need to know. These people that I was hiring 15 years ago, like Dustin Van Ormond and Kevin. Kevin's now a regional. He went from being a technician to our install manager and now he's a regional representative where he's actually helping, I think five or six companies actually grow in those companies, mostly in Phoenix area. He's helping them on a daily basis and, and it's just awesome to see the guys that come into business and know that they're going to have a future in your business. 10, 15, 20, 30 years down the road. That's what's cool, Jason. That's so cool. You're building your business. What are some things that you're excited about with some of these A's and B's that you're bringing in?
- [41:07]
J. Moneymaker
I like seeing their shifts in their mindset. The aha moment, the light bulb that goes off where you could see the transition form where they're like, you know what, maybe I thought I couldn't do it, but I can do it. That's what I like in my employees and the shift when I bring them in and when I train, right? Because a lot of people, let's be real, they got self, self disbelief, right? Years and years and years of people telling you, hey, you can't do this, you can't do that, right? That's just how society is. So it's really good to see them to be able to go outside that bubble and really feel like, man, this is a great opportunity.
- [41:56]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Awesome. So you're seeing a lot of mind, mind shifts. Where are you finding your people, Jason?
- [42:03]
J. Moneymaker
So culture within our company. So as we're bringing people in, a lot of people know myself within the market, but like you said, I wanted to bring in a B players and when you bring In a B players and you show them that you take care of your people and your people takes care of your clients. And then you see the testimonials and the reviews and it's actually a real thing. Then they start telling people awesome.
- [42:29]
Wyatt Hedsworth
So. So a lot of referral, a lot of people coming in because they want to be part of that culture. Yeah. Are you. Did you model your business? Sounds like you model some things after us. But what are. Would have you started this sooner or do you feel like you got enough, like all your experience helped you do this at the right time, or do you wish you would have actually done this sooner?
- [42:50]
J. Moneymaker
No, I think the. The opportunity of me going to companies and seeing. I mean I get the opportunity white to in the last six years to be in hundreds and maybe thousands of different operations and see different things all across the nation. And I got to see what worked and didn't work. And I think that was a high advantage of when I did start. It was I could take all those different things that I saw that worked and failed and implemented in my own thing. I think if I would have started it six years ago instead of the training six years ago and flip flopped it, I don't think I would have. I don't think I would have grown royalty to where we are today. I think I would have quit.
- [43:35]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Well, wow. So that's actually giving you enough experience and knowledge that you're able to push through.
- [43:41]
J. Moneymaker
That's 100%.
- [43:43]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Do you. So who's your general manager?
- [43:47]
J. Moneymaker
Dave Pearson.
- [43:48]
Wyatt Hedsworth
How did you find him?
- [43:50]
J. Moneymaker
He's a cousin. He's my first cousin and I brought him into the trades of H Vac 12 years ago.
- [43:56]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Oh, wow.
- [43:57]
J. Moneymaker
And he was actually a operations GM in Lodi and they sold to acquisition and he reached out to me, it was like the perfect timing and I said, absolutely. Open arms.
- [44:10]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Your. Your GM is the most important position. So. And. And he is really CEO. He's a CEO.
- [44:17]
J. Moneymaker
Really? Yeah. Yeah. And it's cr. It's crazy. We're six months apart and literally like I got my blood brothers, which I love, but I'm so close to him. Our parents used to dress us up like twins. So yeah, he's my right hand man.
- [44:30]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Very good. So. And he's been with you how long now?
- [44:34]
J. Moneymaker
The whole year.
- [44:35]
Wyatt Hedsworth
The whole year. Are you, what are you finding, what are you finding marketing wise that's helping you grow this? Because you're growing this ground up?
- [44:42]
J. Moneymaker
Yeah, the marketing. Well, first off, the marketing that we had to do was sweat equity. First you know, I didn't have all the means and funds to just blow through last summer. So just getting yourself out there in front of the community. But now this summer as we're growing, right, we were able to get Google approved his business and you know, we were, it took us a while. We got Google approved in February of 2025. But being able to get indoors and opportunities, we're at 125 reviews with five stars. So really? Yeah, really being able to give the customer experience and really home in and make your team really actually believe that the customer experience is the best and most important thing.
- [45:32]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Very much it's belief from within. You know, Rome did not, it did not get destroyed from without. It was destroyed from within. And I really believe that also we build these businesses from within or we destroy them from within. It's the belief of our people and they get on board. But you're right, you gotta sounds like you gotta have a great gm. So that's, that's the number one thing.
- [45:56]
J. Moneymaker
And I mean to piggyback off of it too. Why? See I love our conversations to piggyback off of. What you were saying too is, you know, when we're marketing right now this summer, being able to gear up to where we are today. I was talking about Mel Shark. Mel shark. We do 10,000 plus mailers that go out and they go out and they go out in sequence. And we have a good game plan of what those are going to look like the next several months. Also we do a lot of outbounding as well. So we do a lot of AI text messaging. Outbounding, text messaging throughout the community as well. A lot of sponsorships. Home shows.
- [46:49]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Home shows. There you go. Yes. Those take a lot of work. We're doing those also. But it takes a lot of work for me.
- [46:55]
J. Moneymaker
We just, we just did a sponsor at a golf event and I'm gonna tell you, we got, I, I want to say close to 36 tune ups, paid tune ups at $49 from this event that we did.
- [47:14]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Wow.
- [47:15]
J. Moneymaker
And it happened to be like, it was weird. My wife and I, we threw it at our, our golf course here and it was an event that is the second year it's friends of ours. But we didn't know that it was going to be like our 20 year high school reunion. It was crazy because people came from all over different states, people that moved. So it was cool because a lot of people were still in the community as well. And we booked a lot of appointments.
- [47:43]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Wow, that's good.
- [47:44]
J. Moneymaker
That's Father's Day weekend or the weekend before. Yeah.
- [47:48]
Wyatt Hedsworth
So you'll be doing that one again?
- [47:50]
J. Moneymaker
Yeah, we'll be doing that one again. Absolutely. And we actually. We won a sponsor hole. Like, they judged all the holes, and we won the whole, like, the best sponsor. So it was pretty cool, too.
- [48:02]
Wyatt Hedsworth
That's really.
- [48:02]
J. Moneymaker
And yourself apart, right?
- [48:04]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Yep. Very much so. Very much so. Yeah. So you've got the right set up there. Jeremy Hansen. With Jeremy Hansen was the best thing I did was putting him as general manager. So you. You got that. That one. That is key. Get the right manager.
- [48:18]
J. Moneymaker
You know, one thing that I'm also gonna say is my church community. My church community has came through so, so much. It is absolutely wild. They got me through my first summer. They helped me out as, you know, just feeding it out there, allowing me, you know, they would throw big car events and. And they would ask me if I wanted to set up the royalty and everything like that at a car show and, you know, just putting myself out there. They would hear that someone in the community or within the church needs help, they would always call me. So I was really generating a lot. And same as this year as well. So, I mean, definitely church. God's definitely got us to. To where we are as well. We wouldn't be able to. To be where we are without the faith and the drive that I have from him, you know.
- [49:15]
Wyatt Hedsworth
Very nice. So that's good.
- [49:17]
J. Moneymaker
Absolutely. Well, Mr. Mr. White, I enjoy our conversation. I know you're a busy, busy man, but I'm excited to. To conversate with you. Next time, get something going with you and the team. And until next time, y' all.