Loading summary
A
Every successful home service business needs effective marketing. The kind that drives new leads and keeps your current customers coming back. That's where mailshark comes in. They strategically analyze your market and help target the right homes using postcards, magnets, plastic mailers, and even letters powered for formats that truly make your marketing different from your competitors. Their ROI dashboard brings complete transparency to your marketing, showing exactly how your direct mail is performing so you can make smarter data driven decisions. Whether you want to send all of your marketing at once or spread it out widely, mailshark has a plan that fits your schedule and your budget.
B
Best of all, they handle everything for.
A
You and there are never any subscription fees just done for you. Direct mail that works. If you're ready to grow, mailshark is the direct mail partner that delivers.
C
This.
B
Is H Vac Masters of the Hustle with your host J Money Maker. Looking at the city like I already own it multiple years. Yeah, I'm a hustler cuz I'm a hustler. Yeah.
C
Woo.
B
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 318. And first off, I just got to say what is up Spartans? I believe we all have a Spartan in us. It is my job, my duty and my obligation to bring that beast out. Let's go. And we have a great podcast for you all. We are going to be dropping bombs about a new software that's, you know, it's been out for quite some time but it's something that I was able to use recently on an on site and I was completely blown away. But before we roll into the podcast, this podcast is brought to you by Home Shark. Home Shark is an amazing way to get yourself in opportunities. Get your foot in the door as a contractor. The logistics, the meeting, everything is factual information. We've been using it at Royalty Heat in an Air. I'm telling you we're already at what a week into July? A week and a half and we're already over a hundred thousand in revenue of system installs from Mel Shock with the opportunities. This also is brought to you by Nuva Thermostat. The thermostat made by the contractor for the contractor. I'm excited because we are going to be having and hosting an event myself, Tommy Melo and Ismael Valdez up at the Service Titan headquarters July 21. So I'll see you all out there as well. Super excited. It's an all day event from 9am to 6pm absolute nuggets and bombs are going to be dropped. A lot of networking, a lot of value. So I'll see you all out there. But let's roll into the podcast, y'. All. Let's go ahead and give Ms. Shelby Brager a big old welcome. What is up? Welcome to the H vac Masters of the hustle.
C
It is great to be here. Your energy is unparalleled. It's. It's hard to like exude the energy that you do over a like zoom style screen. And I can feel it. So it's fun to be here.
B
Well, I love it. Right? And I always tell everyone that's what I even in sales appointments and estimates or, or just service calls, right? You got to create the energy you, you got to be. Because how many times do we go into appointments or just meet people in general that their energy is kind of just, you know, I mean, hopefully you.
C
Don'T say that about me. After this podcast you'll be like, oh, that was a. That was.
B
Oh my goodness, no, absolutely not. So Ms. Shelby is a absolute monster and making a massive impact in the trades of, in the industry with a software that's called Conduit. And I had the opportunity to go on the on site and you know, when I first learned about heat load calculations, what I did was old school style. So I'd go around, I'd measure all the windows in the home, I'd go up in the attic and calculate how much r value of insulation. The single pane tool, dual pane square footage, height of the ceiling. Right. How many bedrooms are in the home, times that by two for body heat. Like all of these logistics that go into it. I was old school, but then, you know, you learn about other software programs out there that are cool. But this absolutely blew my mind. Can you talk about Conduit real quick and how this started?
C
Yeah, absolutely. So I'll first tell you what it is. Conduit is a lidar powered design and sales platform for residential H VAC contractors. And our goal is to enable contractors to scan home so literally walk through with an iPad pro, scan out that space, which builds a 3D model, a 2D floor plan with all of your dimensions on it, perform ACA certified manual J load calculations, which for in states where you need permits, that's what you need, and then visualize installation. So what we wanted to do was take what, what is a crap ton of work and transform it into a sales experience. Because what we found is the contractors were doing what you were Doing Jason, doing the best work for their customers were the ones who often actually had to spend more time that wasn't actually engaging the customer. It's really hard to do these detailed analyses with while also explaining things to your customer. So we thought, what can we do to automate that part that's really like just tactical, technical, that doesn't engage the customer? How can we automate it and also turn it into a sales experience that also, that builds value at the same time? So that was, that was our goal. And it brings us back to why we started this company. My co founder Marissa and I, we were just in awe of the industry and we started learning, you know, what can we do to accelerate in particular residential energy efficiency. This was almost five years ago now. We just started learning. We said, you know, there's a lot that, you know, different utilities might say, there's a lot that different political figures may say. There's a lot that, you know, your consumers might say. But what we see is that energy efficient equipment isn't being adopted by many homeowners. And for us, the question which is going to sound silly to you, it was like, why? Why is that the case? And ultimately the. The answer is very simple. To any contractor who's ever worked in the industry, it's because it's hard to sell, that it's hard to explain to customers in two hours or less why they need to invest in something for the next 20 years of their home's decision, or why they need to pay a premium for not only just a better installation, but a better service experience. And we realized that that entire like relationship building that has to happen in a very short amount of time. And also value building to explain why this is the right solution for the home is really complex. And what we found is that contractors have a huge amount of burdens put on to them, not just in terms of we mentioned permits, permit paperwork, rebate paperwork, install handoffs that the customer never sees but gets to benefit from. And they also at the same time have a lot of value that they are delivering that homeowners never understand. So that was the problem we sought out to solve. And what we really wanted to focus on was building a company for contractors. So everything we built, we surrounded ourselves with the most incredible H Vac contractors out there to give us feedback who wanted to see the industry adopt new technology. And that's everything you see built in today has been built by feedback that we've gotten from our customers. And our early users love it.
B
Just some shout outs real quick as people are jumping on. What's up, Tony? How you doing, T.J. how you doing? As y' all are watching, if you guys got questions, let us know. But this is a badass software called Conduit and we're just now getting in the logistics of everything. But let me start off by saying this, okay. By a national trainer that's been all over the country and thousands of different operations and companies. I'll tell you this, the thing that most companies are missing is they don't do manual J heat loads. So if you're trying to be different than everybody else. Right. And not cut corners. And you could talk about this. I always say the bigger the show, the bigger the what? The bigger the show, the bigger the dough. Involving your homeowner in this process is super cool as well. But most companies and most professionals go out there and they don't do it. They look at the system and they size it based off what's out there, but they don't go through the logistics and doing the measurements. And back when I used to do the measurements old school. Right. It would be time exhausting too. And if you're running four appointments a day, trust me, you're going to cut corners and things like that. And these are one of the corners that get cut. But by having Conduit and this software program, what I was able to do when she's talking about Michelle baby walking around the house and 3D imaging the house, right. You're literally making a 3D printing diagram of the home in a bird's eye view. Like it's super crazy. Can you talk about the software and like kind of the logistics of the brain work that went into the. That part of the design?
C
Yeah. Fortunately, I'm not the engineering team behind it. Our incredible engineering team is just, we have a designer who comes from NASA. Our engineers have worked with drones. They looked at all different types of technology. But the core of it that we're using is lidar. The reason we're using lidar is because in devices that many contractors are already carrying around today in iPad Pro, there's already those lidar sensors in there. So what LIDAR stands for is light detection and ranging. And it's a fancy term that has been in technology that's been used in self driving cars and satellite imagery. But the ones that are in your iPad Pro, what they help measure is dependency dimensions. So they work by sending light beams out, measuring how long it takes for that light beam to bounce back to you to determine distances. And with that measurement of Distance as it goes, it's very fast and it's capturing all of the dimensions of a given room while still maintaining like the privacy of what's actually in that room. So when I scan my home, which I do every day, multiple times a day, when I'm showing people the platform, it never saves the fact that I have like 50 pairs of shoes in the hallway. Like, nobody ever has to know except for the fact that I just told you. But it's, it's capturing all of those dimensions. And why it's so important for a heat load is because we're capturing the dimensions of not just all of those walls and the surface areas, their heights, which gets you the volume of the space, but we're also capturing the dimensions of windows, we're capturing the dimensions of doors. We apply the materials for you. So we know that, hey, if you have a big west facing window, which I do, it's about to get really toasty in here because we have more solar heating in that, in that later part of the day. And so as you're designing, we're taking into account both the materials as well as the dimensions of each one of those spaces and the orientations, which is the core of a heat load. The heat load is, you know, how much of this type of material do you have multiplied by how much, how much heat transfer goes through that material. And that's sort of how you get to your results. And that's what we do in the background for you while you can talk to the customer about what you're doing.
B
I absolutely love it. And like I said, I was completely mind blown just with the fact of walking around the house. And I'm always talking about engaging your homeowner. Right. And it's that talking point because it's new technology and it's. The homeowners wants to be able. They're like, what are you doing walking around that? Like, that's really cool. You're actually doing a 3D printout layout of the house and having them maybe grab the iPad and walk around with you. Right. As giving you the tour of the home potentially, and giving them the, I guess, the importance of having them involved in your process. Right. Because too many times, technicians and comfort advisors, they lose that one on one touch potentially. Right. So I think that's very smart that this helps engage the customer relationship and helps them walk them through the process as well. And also they feel like they're engineering their own system if you allow them to be a part of your process. Right.
C
I couldn't have said it better myself. I think that's like the key to a great sale. I mean, everybody who's listening and knows this better than I do. But like, the key is building buy in. What's the best way to build buy in? Do it together. For those who are owners or managers of their businesses, what's the best way to make sure your employees adopt a process? You're selling a process to them. It's getting them, getting them involved in that decision making process. And so the same thing is true with that design. Um, it's also showing your craftsmanship. Right. Most homeowners, when they're comparing H vac companies, they're going to make this decision two to three times in their entire life. And when they're, they're going to totally forget what they learned last time, by the way. But when they make that decision, they're going to be like, first off, they're going to think it's $6,000 for a new AC. They're wrong. But they're still going to think that. Then what they're going to do is they're going to say, well, it's just a box. You can just replace it. It's like my refrigerator. We all know it's nothing like your refrigerator. And so how can we make sure that the homeowner actually understands that? And it's by showing your work. I love, I love the bigger the show, the bigger the dough. But one, one sales manager told me, he's like, you like, are not like, if you're like, it's the biggest sales trap if you're not showing your work. And that like, that has always stuck with me. He said that to me three years ago and I have never forgotten because it really is true. Like, how are people supposed to differentiate contractors that they won't think twice about in five years unless they work with an amazing maintenance plan? We won't talk about that today, but there's, I'm sure there's a lot of thoughts here. How do you stay top of mind? How are you, how are you differentiating yourself? You got to show it on site.
B
Yeah, you have to show it on site. And I'm telling you the biggest form when you're on any form of estimate is doing a manual J heat load calculation. Talking about it. I mean, there's so many third party articles that state that if a contractor comes out and they don't perform or even talk about a manual J, they're probably not doing it, which means they're cutting corners up front. So if they're cutting corners up front, what are they going to be doing behind the scenes potentially? Right. And you could start creating that fear and doubt or work, change orders or undersizing systems. Right. So those are things that the highlight points that trigger emotion. Right. And people what buy off of motion for sure.
C
And I think this is, it's another way to sell your promise, right. If you are a phenomenal shop, you are doing a few different things, right? Not only. And this is what you're explaining to them, you're like, hey, first, you know, I walked in the door. One thing I'm going to do today is make sure you have the right solution here. You mentioned, you know, the bedroom upstairs a little uncomfortable. But that's why I'm going to run what's called a heat load today. I'm going to make sure you have not just the right size system, but I'm also going to check to make sure you have the right airflow. Think about it as you got to have a good heart and you got to have good arteries for your system to work well. So now we're talking about duct work, which by the way, most duct work in the United States is undersized. Most systems are oversized, most duct work is undersized. So now you're looking at a broader opportunity as well to make that home both more efficient but also provide a bigger opportunity to your business. And so when you're weaving it together and showing them, you know, I'm going to do my due diligence, that plants doubt, plant seeds of doubt. If somebody else doesn't do it, it then tees you up to talk about all the other things you do differently as a company. So you probably offer an amazing warranty, your labor warranty. You know, one of the reasons we can offer such a great labor warranty is because we do make sure that we're putting in the right thing up front. That's why I ran this heat load today, or that's why this is our process. And just make sure, you know, no matter who you go with, you want to make sure they have a great process and a warranty to back up. And then finally, maybe you're working with an amazing, smart thermostat company where you can keep a long standing relationship and create customer touch points. You're going to let them know, hey, you know, we've talked about your system today. One of the things that's really important to us is delivering continuous quality. We know your system is going to work great, but we also want to make sure that if it doesn't, we're here to save the day. So here's, you know, our solution for that. Let us know what you think and, and it's about weaving it together and showing your quality across all those pieces. It'll make a huge difference.
B
I got to ask you, Shelby, where did you learn your customer? Not customer experience, but just the knowledge of the importance of the customer experience and relationship.
C
Our cost are our contractors. So my co founder and I, before we even considered starting a business, this is, this is more than you bargained for. But we, you know, reached out to any contractor who would speak with us and we were super lucky because people, and that's frankly why we decided we wanted to start a business in this industry is the way we were welcomed in was unlike anything I've ever experienced. I've worked in a few other industries before. Folks really were like, if I can do anything to make this industry better, I want to. That's that will I'll help you just for that reason. And so contractors took us on ride alongs and, and we'd watch and we'd see what are they doing really well. We would learn from them. We. I personally have trained about 250 teams. I have gone on site with dozens and dozens of them. And I've watched the different ways the managers interact. I've learned like what are different ways people are talking about things grinding. It's. It's so fun, right? Like you, it's so cool to see what are these things that people do really well and then learn, learn from it. And, and yeah, it all comes down to our customers and asking them, how are you using this? What does this look like for you?
B
Now, one thing that you mentioned when you're talking about the software is that it runs off a lidar, right?
C
Yeah.
B
And so can you explain that? Because maybe some of them have to invest in maybe iPads. Because there's certain iPads. Right. It's not the iPad air. So talk about real quick. What would they have to invest to go with conduit?
C
Yeah, absolutely. So it is an iPad pro. And just to make it a little bit more complicated, it's different generations. So if you get the 12.9 inch one is the fourth generation plus. Get the 11 inch one, which is the one I recommend. It's the second generation plus. And the reason why is roughly at the end of 2020, they released iPad pros that had had lidar sensors in them. And so as long as you have an iPad pro that has Lidar in them, you, you can use conduit on them. The good news is for most companies that need to make that investment, one, nobody ever complains about needing to get a new iPad, but two, it's most folks, you can finance them super easily through your cellular provider because they just want to lock you into that contract.
B
Yeah, no, I, I, and I mean when you go out there, right, for those of you that are still on paper, right, this might be a time to upgrade. Very important, you know, as companies might be thinking, hey, what does the, the onboarding or the startup process look like? You know, maybe contractors want to start this. We're in mid summer right now. It's going to take time for them to learn the software and maybe use it. So what would the startup process look like?
C
Yeah, it's, it's a great question. I think the number one thing I'll always say is like you want to take time to learn any new process you're putting into your sales process. The sales process is a precious time and I think a lot of folks are afraid to change it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't change it, but it means that you want to dedicate some time to practice. If I'm going to pitch you, Jason, on some new product feature that we have, I'm going to write out a script for myself first and then I'm going to practice it one time in the mirror. Probably not in the mirror, to be honest with you, but I'm going to practice it at least once and then I'm going to pitch.
B
I might do it, I don't know.
C
But that's the thing is we want to make sure people have time to practice. We've asked our, our, our users, you know, roughly how many jobs does it take to feel really comfortable doing this in front of a customer? They say anywhere between two and ten. So I'd say let's go with the number six. And that's what we like to advise is you gotta practice six times before you feel fully confident doing this. Now that's why we do onboarding. So conduit feels really strongly that, you know, not that first off, the gm, the owner of the business doesn't need to become a conduit expert. They need to know what it is that we do. They need know our support numbers that they can direct their team members back to us. But for us, you know, our, our goal is to really streamline that onboarding process and we can get people up and running within a day. It really just depends. Do you want to practice on. Do you have the time to practice, you know, one or two times before you go out and do it in front of the customer. And we have all kinds of tips, right? Just as you introduce a new thing to your sales process, take it in baby steps. The first time you go out to a customer job, just do the scan, don't worry about the accuracy of the load. The second time you go out, do the scan and then tailor the accuracy. The third time, then start using the augmented reality equipment visualizer in there so you can show them what a new system will look like. You can layer it on and take those steps to make sure that you're learning at your own pace, but you can still implement pieces of it in the field.
B
One thing that you hit on right there, right, is as the company's adopting it, it's going to be a new process. So you have to role play. You have to have your team practice because if you're not having them practice in house, they're not going to do it in the client's house. I promise you. They're not going to set themselves up to be uncomfortable. You have to allow them to be uncomfortable in the office and thrive in the office. So then when they are out in the field, they're comfortable and thriving on their, their own. So make sure that, hey, it's not just signing up for the software, but it's understanding how to use it and to role play and make everybody accustomed to it because it has to be used through everyone in the, in the company. You can't pick or choose a couple technicians, you know, or, or sales professionals. It has to be everyone running the same process and the same steps every single time.
C
Amen. I, I couldn't have said it better myself. Like it it really that our software is cool. I love our software, it's awesome. But it really comes down to who's using it. And you have to support your team members to feel confident with any part of their and regardless of whether it's conduit, it's. This is why we love working with folks who coach others because you have such a good sense of like, how do we actually improve the sales process overall? How do we implement, how do we train, how do we increase that confidence level? Those are the pieces where teams need the manager support and coaches support.
B
Now Shelby, as I'm going through the appointment, right, and I'm going around and I'm using conduit to do my manual J heat load. Now after I'm done doing it, is it possible to upload it in my CRM program, housecall Pro or Service Titan or whatever I'm using.
C
So yes is the short answer. You can upload as PDF into a variety. We also have a, a an integration with Service Titan Live as well. So we have a mix of different options but you can either share as a PDF, upload those reports directly, share over email. You can share in any way that you would want to share it. And then you. We also have a robust integration with Service Titan.
B
Yeah, no, and one thing that you said that's important right Is I forget the logistic number that you said but you said a certain amount of systems are installed incorrectly, right. By all Crown contractors nationwide. And this helps you as a contractor to be different than everybody else to allow those key point conversations. And again there's three type of learners out there, right? There's audio, visual and sensory. This hits all three of those platforms. So when you are presenting your solutions at the end a confused mind is always going to say what? But when you hit all those platforms you could involve them in your process. You're hitting all those. So it makes that conversation at the end when you are asking for a $30,000 investment, right. And maybe a lot of you are scared of that number. Well, why are you scared of it? Well, you didn't build any value, right? Homeowners only buy when value exceeds price. So what are you doing to make sure that you have the right tools to exceed value? So you make sure that the price is completely covered. Now as you continue to grow the software, is there anything new that's coming out with the software or adapting that you want to talk about?
C
Yeah, for sure. So we in terms of what we initially built, right. We start with load calculations, then we expanded into photos and equipment visualization. So can use augmented reality to visualize what you know an LG unit is going to look like on the wall or what a new outdoor condensing unit is going to look like on the outside and where you're going to put it. We just introduced last week the ability to mark that up so you can draw a line set and say this is where the line set's going. Installers like this is where you know, this is where you know the homeowner is really sensitive to these plants. Don't step on them, whatever it you can.
B
Passing the baton, right?
C
Exactly.
B
Important right there. I love it.
C
And so that's what we're next releasing is something called floor plan annotation. So the ability to we generate a Beautiful floor plan that has, you know, your room by room cfn, your square footage, your dimensions, all on it. But also now you want to annotate that as well. So right now you can annotate photos. We'll be annotating floor plans and give a variety of options there. So that's like very near term is like we're expanding the ability to improve those handoffs and improving our reports, what's coming down the road. So what we have today is, you know, we tell you, we give you a guide on what you should be putting in the home. We actually want to make that more tactical. So what exact equipment should you be putting in that home? You know, based off of, you know, ahri matchups, what should we be including indirectly saying, here's your load, here's the equipment that we recommend directly and ideally based off of what you actually sell so that we can transition and support your quoting process next. So that's like the vision is let's continue to streamline that entire on site experience both in terms of the handoffs that need to happen, the sale that needs to be made, and, and really enhance that entire customer experience, but also do it while streamlining the comfort professionals experience as well.
B
What are some of the challenges that you all had to overcome with the software program rolling it out?
C
It's just so many. Where do I begin? No, I mean the first piece was honestly, I think the biggest thing we realized when we first started building this software in 2022 was how sensitive that on site experience is. And that means that like we spent, to be honest, probably a year longer than we thought we would just on improving the core continuously. Like a prototype cannot. There's like the concept of like a minimal minimum lov product when we realized is the minimum for this industry is actually quite high because what you need. And we thought like we had it, you know, late 2022, early 2023, we're like, we got this and what we like. Our users in the field were so kind, but they're like, look, we need it to like, we need to know that it's going to work every time in the field like that, like if there's a bug that it's going to be easy to fix that like if there is like whatever it is. And our users were so patient with us. But it meant that we invested so much in reliability because we realized that that's actually the number one criteria if you're going to be in somebody's sales process is that you're reliable, you can Be consistently used and you can be consistently part of that process comes back to training. Like you have to train on one process for your team. Similarly, you got to be able to be reliable for that process. And I would say that that was, it was, it was needing to figure out where was that point. And that was the point where we felt comfortable on hitting go on scaling. We actually didn't come out of beta until March of 2024. We've only been out of beta for a little less than a year and a half. And that's because we felt like it took those two years for us to really feel like this is robust enough that our contractors are going to have that great reliable experience that they need and then have flexibility afterward. And I think that is, that's been such an important learning for us and it really informs how we develop when we like if we're changing anything about the core workflow. So like for us that's like scanning and coming to a report, coming to an answer. We like test it so, so, so much. If we release something that's just like a fun add on, like we can, you know, we can release that quickly and we can because we know it's not going to like, people will play with it. Like they'll give us feedback and we'll be able to make sure that it's not going to impact the core of what they need to accomplish on site. Like, we have homeowner education modules. We were able to release those quite quickly because we knew that one, they were very difficult to mess up, but two, that they were a great resource that was an add on to that experience that was customizable for that customer. And once we unlocked that, that we need to make this super reliable, invest in making that core experience. Experience great. I think that was probably the biggest challenge, but it took us a while to figure out like, okay, where's that mark? Where's that mark where like we know, we call our customers, they're going to be happy with it.
B
Yeah. Now as I'm a technician, I gotta ask, you know, using a iPad, what if I'm in the mountains and I lose Internet? Is it still going to work or am I not going to be able to rely on it because of no Internet?
C
No. That's a perfect example of a type of question that we knew we needed to solve. So we have the ability to scan offline and once you connect back to the Internet, you can associate it and calculate. It's very similar to financing where we need to calculate with the Internet. Otherwise, you'd have to buy a fancier iPad that had way more memory, and we don't want to do that. We want you to get the cheapest iPad Pro there is, and then we want to compute everything in the cloud. But we. We also want to make sure that you can scan on site no matter what. So you can scan offline if you're in, you know, a rural environment in the mountains. If for some reason it's, you know, global blackout of some kind, I don't even know. But, like, you can scan, and that's the core of the only thing you need to get done on site.
B
Love it. Love it. So, as you continue to grow, I know that there's going to be a lot of different contractors listening to the podcast, and you're going to get a lot of people reaching out. Shelby, what if they want to sign up? How can they sign up? Who do they need to reach out to?
C
Yeah, absolutely. Well, first thing is there'll be a link in the show notes, I believe, where you can book a demo directly. So please feel free to use that if you, for any reason, do not feel like doing that. You are welcome to reach out directly to me. Just let me know you heard about us through Jason. And my email is pretty. Pretty common on the website or through on the Internet. It's shelbyetconduit.com. so just my first name and then our email, our website address.
B
Awesome. And, Shelby, I got a question. As there's listeners from business owners, technicians, CSR reps, installers, sales professionals, what would you like for them to get out of this episode of H Vac Masters of the Hustle.
C
Ooh. I mean, I think that the main thing I'd want them to take away is, look, you can build a ton of value on site. Conduit is one way to do it. It's one way that obviously I'm very partial to, but there is so much opportunity to really show the customer what you're doing and why you're doing it, and that. That, like working with coaches like. Like Jason to help you achieve that, and working with tools like Conduit, you got to do both. You got to work on both your processes and integrating technology as part of it, and hopefully you'll consider using either.
B
Yeah, don't get lost. I'm telling you, the. The H VAC trades, everything's going AI, Everything's going technology generated. And I got to tell you, we're going to be using this at Royalty Heat in an Air, and I'm super excited because I'm extremely, extremely passionate about Manual J heat low calculations and establishing being different than everyone else. And this right here, boom, is the top and best. I'm telling you, I'm friends with other people that created software programs that do manual Js. This is by far the best thing that I've seen out there and I've used it in the field at other companies and I'm excited to integrate it to Royalty Heat in there. So Ms. Shelby, congratulations to you all. I'm excited to use it. And for all of you out there that aren't using anything right now, you gotta reach out, you gotta connect, you gotta use it. Until next time, late.
Guest: Shelby Breger, Co-Founder of Conduit Software
Host: JDubMoneyMaker
Recorded: September 8, 2025
In this episode, host JDubMoneyMaker welcomes Shelby Breger, co-founder of Conduit Software, to explore how technology—specifically Conduit’s LiDAR-powered platform—is transforming residential HVAC contracting. This wide-ranging conversation delves into the evolution of heat load calculations, how to engage customers by showing your work, and why embracing new tools is essential for HVAC companies striving to differentiate and grow.
Old School vs. Tech-Driven Process
Why Energy Efficiency is Hard to Sell
How LiDAR Works (09:48)
Customer Engagement as a Sales Tool
Differentiation in a Competitive Market
Educational Dialogue with Customers
What Do Contractors Need to Start?
Onboarding, Training, and Company Buy-In
Integration with CRMs & Service Platforms
Current and Upcoming Features
Reliability Took Time
Offline Capability
Why the Industry Matters
Broader Takeaway for Listeners
On Customer Engagement:
“The key is building buy in. What’s the best way to build buy in? Do it together.”
—Shelby Breger (12:51)
On Differentiation:
“The bigger the show, the bigger the dough.”
—JDubMoneyMaker (08:11)
On Reliability & Adoption:
“The minimum for this industry is actually quite high… You need it to work every time in the field.”
—Shelby Breger (27:45)
On Training and Buy-in:
“If you’re not having them practice in house, they’re not going to do it in the client’s house. I promise you.”
—JDubMoneyMaker (22:02)
On Building Value:
“Homeowners only buy when value exceeds price. So what are you doing to make sure that you have the right tools to exceed value?”
—JDubMoneyMaker (24:14)
| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|---------| | 05:09 | Shelby Explains Origin/Goal of Conduit | | 09:48 | Technical Deep Dive: How LiDAR Works in HVAC Context | | 11:51 | Engaging Homeowners and Building Value During the Scan | | 14:30 | Differentiation: Manual J as a Key Selling Point | | 18:49 | What Kind of iPad Needed (Hardware Requirements) | | 20:41 | Onboarding Insights: “Six Jobs to Master” | | 23:52 | Integration with CRMs & Workflows | | 25:30 | New and Upcoming Features (AR, Annotation, Reporting) | | 27:28 | Shelby on Development Challenges and Reliability Expectations | | 30:47 | Offline Scanning Capability | | 32:35 | Shelby’s Main Takeaway for Listeners |
JDub’s Final Word: Manual J calculations and showing your work are key to differentiation, not only to protect the homeowner but to build trust and justify your value. Conduit enables this more effectively than ever.
Shelby’s Challenge: Use technology to make your value visible. Whether you use Conduit or another tool, commit to process, practice, and customer buy-in for industry-leading results.
Contact & Next Steps:
End of Summary.