HVAC Techs Can Make More Money by Fixing Airflow, Oversizing & Duct Issues – Tim De Stasio Part 2
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AC SmartSeal, the professional's choice. So we got our second part with Tim DeStasio. There's sales techs out there that walk into mainly residential homes.

And they just try to sell things. And that's their whole goal is, hey, we got to get you a new one of those and a new one of those. And we'll add in three of these type things. But there's no real assessment of what's going on and deep diving into the issues, comfort issues or lingering issues the home has or the HVAC system has. So.

We're going to throw around ideas on how we can potentially fix that. Fix the fact that we're just selling things, but deep diagnostics and then providing solutions after, but still making good money, bringing in that revenue still.

This is the HVAC Know It All podcast. I'm your host, Gary McCready. This podcast is sponsored by Master. And if you guys are looking for additional training, commercial and residential training, reach out to your local rep because here in Ontario and even out West, they have training facilities and they are doing consistent and constant training on different things, commercial and residential.

and residential. So check them out guys. Check out master.ca. This podcast is sponsored by Cintas and if you're looking for blue collar uniforms or anything that's an accessory to a blue collar uniform, check out cintas.com forward slash HVAC know-it-all for your blue collar uniform needs. Welcome to the HVAC know-it-all podcast recorded from a basement somewhere in Toronto, Canada.

Your host and HVAC tech, Gary McCready, will take you on a deep dive into the industry discussing all things HVAC, from storytelling to technical discussion. Enjoy the show.

Okay. So let's move away from the comfort advisor because it's kind of like a different thing. I know a lot of, I've talked to a lot of people that have gone from the field to being comfort advisor and that's probably the best. I don't even like the term comfort advisor. It just sounds silly to me, but let's talk about the actual sales tech, the technician that's in the van with their tools and they get the calls. Hey, there's a no heat here and no cool there. And they show up

And their skill level in a lot of cases is not on par with the industry. It's usually subpar. So if they can't get through something, if it's not simple, a simple thing like cleaning a flame sensor or, you know, just changing, swapping out an inducer motor that has a couple of screws on it. If it's something a little bit more elaborate that takes some depth in depth thinking and problem solving, it's like you need a new one.

So this is where we're starting to go. And I get it. There's a time where, okay, if it's 10 years old and it looks problematic, it's a lemon or something like that, and it's going to cost $3,000 to fix, but you can get a new one for, I don't know, four or five or something like that and new warranty. I get you have to think about all that kind of stuff, but it seems like we're pushing new stuff on a lot of people most of the time.

Why, why, why is that? Is it because there's a sales funnel being pressured on these technicians or is it lack of technical knowledge? Is it a combination of both? Like what, what do you think it is? I think it starts with the culture of the company, the company. What do they talk about in their meet in their weekly meetings? Who do they reward? Who is the employee of the month?

Is it, are they always talking about service calls as sales? Well, I sold them an inducer. I sold them a fan motor. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's company culture and that starts from the top. And unfortunately, as we get into more companies being bought out by venture capitalists, it's no longer the, the founder of that company that is running the company. He's been, he's gone. He's gotten his money, uh,

And it is people that their venture cap, their business people, the only language they speak is money. And so everything gets viewed through this lens of whether or not it's profitable enough or not. And so that makes its way into the technicians meetings. It makes its way into the training, the hiring process and the priorities. And even technicians that are more likely to

Lean into that diagnostic and figure out what actually is going on and offer repair solutions. They're usually looked down upon. And the ones that just do the easiest thing and just try to sell them a new one, they're usually praised. They're put on that pedestal. And so they wouldn't be doing it if it didn't work, unfortunately.

Unfortunately, it works with the average consumer. Yeah. And I did a lot of research on venture capitalists at one point because I just had a bunch of, I always come up with these crazy ideas and I'm like, okay, if I have this idea, how am I going to get money? And I went down this rabbit hole one year. And what I know, just to give context to this, if a private equity firm buys a company,

they're investing in the company to make money, right? So within a three to five year period, they're usually looking for a return of three to five times what they put in. So let's say they put in a million bucks. In five years, they want five million back. How do you get that five million back by forcing people to sell things? That's the only way to do it. You're not doing it by changing capacitors and inducers.

No. And, and you do have to, I'm not, I'm not saying sales are bad. You have to sell. Yep. You have to sell things to make money. Everybody needs to make a living. If you don't sell things, you're

the economy stops dead, but there's, there's ways to sell things like using actual test tools to find actual legit problems in a system and saying, look at all of these problems you have because all my test tools told me that this is wrong and that we can rectify this. We don't need to pull your burners out and clean them and change all the flames. We don't need to change the flame sensor. We just need to clean it.

We don't need to charge you $300 for a new flame sensor, but we do need to rectify your airflow issue. Let's put your money there. Right? Something similar to that. And I think that when our recommendations are based on actual data and measurements taken. Evidence. Yeah. Then that is, those sales are ethical. And also another trick that they do is that they over-inflate the price of repairs to drive people towards...

purchasing a new system because even the most financially illiterate person realizes that if it costs them $4,000 to fix their unit, but $12,000 to replace it, they recognize that putting $4,000 into a unit that they've been told is not worth fixing is a bad idea. And so we can start guiding people towards that decision by

By really inflating those repair costs. And they'll do other things like, well, look, none of our repairs, there's no warranty on the repairs because it's on an older unit. I'm like, really? There's no warranty on that fan motor? Like, I get it that you put in the fan motor and if tomorrow the compressor breaks down, you shouldn't be held responsible for that compressor. But you should be held responsible for the craftsmanship of that fan motor. And if you didn't wire that fan motor correctly, you should be held responsible for warrantying it.

But they'll do tricks like that just to get people not to repair the unit. And heaven forbid the person actually wants to repair their unit, that sales technician is not going to know how to repair it. And so that shows up in the way he is talking to the customer as well. And it's going to cause them to say things and do things that are very ethically ambiguous. Right.

Because now they're looking at having to fix that unit they don't know how to fix. Or they're looking at, well, I only get a little bit of a commission if I fix the unit and maybe none at all. But I get a really healthy commission if I sell the new unit. And I'm trying to feed my family. And so now they're in this situation where they're just doing what they have to do to feed their family.

Um, and maybe because of the lack of technical training that's in the culture of that company, they may not even realize that what they're doing is ethically wrong. They may have bought into what they have been taught hook, line and sinker that every year that a air conditioning unit runs past five years, it's losing 10% efficiency. You know, they don't know how to measure that. They don't, but they're, they just been told that and they just regurgitate it to the customer. So it is a broken system. Yeah.

It is, and I don't know what made me think of this, but it's similar to the way pharmaceuticals and doctors work.

Absolutely. Push medicine on people to cover up a symptom. Oh, you got a symptom. Okay. I'll give you that medicine. It'll get rid of that symptom. Oh, you have a side effect. I'll give you a medicine for that symptom and side effect here. But the root cause requires hardcore testing to figure out what it is. And then once we find the root cause, let's treat the root cause so none of the symptoms happen again.

And it's the same thing in this industry is that all these little symptoms that we see, we're trying to put all these medicines at them. And we're not trying to find, we're not going for a proper MRI and blood work to find the actual root cause of the problem to fix it. It's the root cause that the unit is over.

five or 10 years old. And so we're going to, we're going to fix this by replacing the unit. And a lot of times the problem is beyond the unit. It's not the unit, it's the ductwork, it's the airflow, it's, it's something else. And. Or the unit's too big and they replace it with like for like, and they haven't done a load calc and it's too big for the home to begin with. Right. Right. Um, so I kind of liken it to if you got a doctor that immediately you go in there for, um, a headache,

And they immediately say, well, sounds like you've got a brain tumor and we're going to need to operate on it and we're going to need to put you on a bunch of medication. He hasn't run any tests and he scans. And he also doesn't want you to have a second opinion. In fact, he wants you to make a decision right there and then because they can operate tomorrow.

Would you trust that doctor? What if you knew that that doctor was getting a kickback from the pharmaceuticals or from the hospital for sending business? Oh, it's happening all the time. Yeah, it's happening all the time. Would you trust that doctor? Of course not. But would you trust a doctor that runs the test and explains things to you and shows you the test and shows you the numbers and encourage you to get another opinion because he's not hiding anything? Absolutely. And it's the same in our industry. It's unfettered greed.

Um, either at the private equity level or even you can have Joe Blow, uh, owner, uh, HVAC owner that's also greedy and they're just trying to make as much money as possible and willing to do morally ambiguous things to get there. Um, it's the same thing. It's unfettered greed. And it's wrong. I had a, I had a young guy reach out to me.

He was like 23 or 24 or something like that. He's like, he's like, bro. And he's talking to me like this. Like, he's like, bro, how do I get knowledgeable in this trade? I want to be rich and I want to be rich fast. It was something along those lines. And I'm like, uh, I don't even know how to answer your question, man. You ain't going to get rich fast.

in this industry unless you're being dirty. You can get rich in this industry. 100% you can if you do things correctly and right and get a good reputation and everybody comes to you because they know you're going to treat them right and do them fairly. You can get rich. You can do it the right way, but you can do it the wrong way and you can end up

screwing yourself in the end too. Yeah. I mean, if you want to be rich quick, why not just be a drug dealer? I mean, it's, it's a lot quicker and it's, um, just do that. They make a lot more money than sales techs. Just do that. I mean, you're both selling things out of a van. What's the difference? That's right. So how do we fix the, I don't even want to use the word pandemic cause I hate it cause of what it, what it did to a lot of people, but, uh, how do we fix it?

because it seems like it's contagious and it's growing. Supplyhouse.com is your shortcut for part shopping. They have thousands of HVAC parts from all the leading brands, and the orders get shipped and delivered across the U.S. in a day or two tops. HVAC professionals can get free shipping, free returns, and discounts on every other order through their Trademaster program. Order parts and get them delivered right to your door

That's supplyhouse.com. I will start by saying I don't think it will ever be fixed the way that we feel like we can fix it as men and women in this industry. But I can say that the way that we can improve things and make it a lot better is always education.

It's always, it's the next, it's what you and I are doing right now as old farts in the industry, trying to instill some education, some standards of practice to the next generation that's up and coming. And hopefully we're reaching them. And then as those guys become lead technicians and they're training, um,

Some technicians that are a few years younger than them, now they've at least been trained the right way. And with social media, if enough of us show that this is wrong, then the people that don't know any better are going to consume that content and then they're going to gravitate towards what's right. But the sleazeballs, you and I are not going to change the sleazeballs.

And there will always be a certain amount of them in our industry. And so I think that we just, we try to get the ones that we can reach through education. And that transcends not just the sales tech mentality, but the hack mentality. All the stuff that, you know, the old head mentality of don't pull vacuums, two smokes, and, you know, don't braze with nitrogen, that stuff.

Pro press stuff is a bunch of crap like that. We're, we're trying to dilute that with this, this content that we're creating here. And, um, hopefully we educate enough of them where we, we turn the ship a little bit more towards the right direction. And you know what I've been noticing and I'm liking it like some bigger companies around me.

that are massive and they walk in and they have rental programs and they want you on their rental program. Oh, because it's very cheap. But at the end of the rental program, you paid three times the amount of the unit. A lot of people are realizing how crooked the, that system is. And if, if,

Someone in my town gets on Facebook, a Facebook group and says, Hey, my heating's not working. Can you recommend a company? These big companies are never mentioned at all. It's always the small, the small mom and pop one man show, whatever it is, it's always them that are mentioned. And people will even say, stay away from

X, the big company, because they're crooks. So people are starting to realize that the business model they use is not correct. It's crooked. I think there will be a course correction. The pendulum swung one way when interest rates were really, really low and you could finance a $20,000 change out that

that nobody else was selling for $20,000, but you could sell it for that because the only thing that the end user cared about was the monthly payments, and it was like $200 a month.

for 132 months you know who know they didn't realize they were paying three times as much but now the interest rates are higher um i think we're going to see a pendulum swing because that unfettered greed they got so much out of it that they've almost created um they've killed the golden goose you know and and there may be a course correction until something else happens financially that drives that they figure out how to how to rip people off in a different way

Um, but yeah, I do see it where those companies are not, uh, making the profit that they thought they were just a few years ago when they first bought up all these other companies up. Um, and the other thing that's happening is consumers becoming more DIY and, uh,

These companies have only themselves to blame. When you have a customer or a consumer that can buy their own air conditioning unit, and I don't think that's a great idea either, but it is a reality. And we can go to YouTube University and figure out how to get it. And you can even buy a lot of the tools. And it's still cheaper than you hiring a contractor. And honestly, with the low standards and the terrible craftsmanship that we're seeing, the homeowner is probably going to get an equal, if not better result anyway if he DIYs.

then that is also eating into that market. And we're seeing a lot more of that because people just simply cannot afford these rates. They just don't have the money. Then the interest rates are too high and they're being forced to DIY and, you know, more power to them.

I get asked sometimes, can you come out here and start up and commission this system that was put in by me and my brother? And I'm like, well, I'll start it up and commission it. But there's no warranty there. Or people have asked me about putting in a condensing unit that they can get wholesale.

And it used to be I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole. And now I'm at least considering it because I know that there's unfortunately nothing we can do about it. And I will consider it and I'll have to write up my contracts in that way. And I know that's not what we're talking about, but DIY is also a result of what these sales techs are doing. I think that's what I was trying to get at.

Yeah. It's, it's a tough one for me. I remember when I first went out on my own here about three years ago, I, I, uh, I took a job that some guy bought a Senville for his mom's, he had a house, he bought his mom's house and he's building like a little house or a little, uh, extension of the house for his mom. And he bought this Senville off of offline and I installed it. It was actually a cool little job, but

I don't install homeowner bought product anymore. I just, I try to stay away from residential now as much as I can anyway, because I do. Oh, good for you. I like commercial. Yeah. And I have more of an opportunity to do commercial as a subcontractor these days. So, and I'll, I'll do the odd residential call, but I went to one,

a month ago just before Christmas and the son-in-law had his hands in it changing parts and stuff and I'm like what all did he do here and the mother-in-law was like I don't know he's in there changed that and I said do you do anything else like I don't know and I'm like well I ain't touching this because if I leave here and somebody dies of CO poisoning then it's on me

Cause I don't like, am I going to have to go through every part in this machine and make sure it's the correct one? OEM. You know what I mean? Did he, did he bypass a limit somewhere? Right. Right. You know what I mean? I, obviously that's easy to check, but what I'm saying is. Yeah. It was sketchy for me. I, the whole situation was sketchy looking at it. I'm like, I don't want any part of this. I'm sorry. I'm leaving. And as a business owner, you have the right.

Absolutely. And having that power to say no is, is, is really, um, it's empowering actually. Yep. Well, the other thing, and I've done like a truck ran on this. I tell people I don't mark up anything. What you're getting, um, is, um,

my, I know what my rate is for doing a job like this. And it's not just labor. I mean, there are other ancillary costs that I'm putting in there permitting. Um, you know, there's, but it's, it's not just labor, but you can think about it as labor. And it's like, I can get this unit cheaper than you can, but my install rate to install that unit is still the same, whether I buy it or you buy it. Um, and if I buy it, you,

you get more of a warranty. If you buy it, there is no warranty. And I paid less for that same unit than you did. So you're not saving any money by doing that. Where companies get in trouble is that they mark the unit price up. That becomes part of their pricing. Instead of just taking that profit, shifting it over to their labor or installation costs.

And then, you know, then they're thinking about, well, I'm losing that markup. Well, don't mark it up. Shift that over to your install costs. And then that way, it's never the better way to go for the homeowner to hire you to install their equipment.

And then you just set some backstops like you did. Like, you know, I'm not working on equipment that is obviously been tampered with and I'm not installing used equipment and I'm not stalling stuff that doesn't match up. And you set those backstops, but I think we all prefer to be able to furnish and install our own equipment because we can own the job. That is always the best way. I just think that the trend it's trending away from that. And it's becoming way more popular for people to get their own equipment and, and,

You and I are not powerful enough in this industry to stop it. Mr. Cool in it. Yeah. Mr. Cool. Yeah. Okay. So one last thought I'll leave you with. Sure. So this is just a way that we could potentially tackle the whole sales thing. Okay. But still make money. Yeah. Okay. You know that the guy, four quarters in his pocket. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Three UV lights and a Remy halo on the same system. Yeah. Come on. Anyway, um, if we battle that mentality, cause he goes around and trains people on, what have we went around? There's a couple of people that went around and develop their own training, but it's how to do deep diagnostics on systems and still make money. Yep.

What have we battled it that way? Now we're, now we were training proper technicians that are finding problems and creating solutions and still making good coin off of it. Cause there's people out there that have chronic issues with their, their building envelope, their duct work, the system size, all kinds of stuff that we could rectify if we just do some deep dive analysis on it. Right.

Yeah. I mean, that's one of the arms of my business is exactly that is I, I go around, I teach. But are you going around doing trainings at companies and stuff like that? Are you training actual shops on how to do this?

Yes. Okay. So you're already battling this then? Yeah. So that's one of the arms of my business is contractor training. It's local here. I'll even do remote training. So if someone wanted to hire me to do a weekly Zoom training, we could do some of that. Obviously there's things you can't teach because you're not in person, but I've been developing some training programs. And yes, absolutely. That's what we do. And there's organizations like NCI that have those programs, but

I guess the, the, the owner of the company, the decision maker has to make the decision to go down that path to not go down that sales only path, but, but to go down that performance path. And, um, if they're not on board, then, you know, they're the ones that write that check.

And unfortunately, I think you're seeing more of the same kind of people that are buying up and owning these HVAC companies. So, you know, kudos to the ones that do what we're talking about and hopefully we can make them successful so that they are the shop that gets all the good technicians and they get the good reviews and they get the good customers. Hopefully we can help them do that.

My days of running an HVAC company are over. I have no desire to do that ever again, but I can be the consultant that helps the HVAC owner be successful. And that's very rewarding for me is to see those people and see them being successful that way and seeing the light bulbs go off and technicians succeed.

faces when you teach them something. You show them the right way to explain something to a customer instead of the easy way just to try to generate a sale. And yeah, that's the service that me and other people are offering. Yeah, well, that's great. And it is fulfilling. I mean, I get messages...

Like that too. And Hey, I was out on a job and I watched one of your videos and helped me get through it. And it was like a technical video. It wasn't on how to sell the customer. You've done that too though, Gary. Didn't you help a local company? You've done that too, right? Yeah. One of the, one of the, uh, the companies I do sub work for, uh, basically, I guess you could call it a service consultant in a way because I'll, I'll do some,

some consulting for them on job. I do service calls too. Like I'll go, the rooftops down and fix it, but I've done some consulting stuff with them as well. Um, some other companies I've, uh, I've gone and sat in their, their back shop and we've talked about things like combustion analysis. We took a Copeland, uh, teardown compressor and we went through that with them too. So, I mean, I do stuff like that as well. I'd like to do more of it.

To be honest with you, I enjoy that more than standing on a roof by myself, rolling around in the snow, trying to pull the burner out of an old carrier rooftop. Yeah. I enjoy that much more to be honest with you because it's more fulfilling to me because you're reaching more people.

But anyways, anyway, this, we could talk about this forever, but I just wanted to have you on and have this conversation about sales tax industry, how it's going and how we could maybe improve upon that. And I think we, we, we kind of nailed what we had to talk about here. I think the right people that want to be to, to improve and to sell HVAC the right way are going to consume our content and they're going to do the right thing.

the wrong people that sometimes like to troll our, our content, trying to justify or promote the sales tech mentality. And always saying, well, I'm, I'm sleeping in a X square foot house and I'm driving this and I'm driving that. Like, I don't think we're going to get to them. And I think, you know, as long as we just kind of accept that and we focus on what we can change, that we will make some change. I get it. But, but,

They could still be living in that house and driving that if, if they do it the right way and, and build, build out actual solutions. Yeah, they could. They could be doing the same exact thing, right? They're just not, but that's the hard path. You're absolutely right. It's the hard path to learn something new and learn how to deep dive into the, the analysis of, of a system and why it's working the way it does. It's hard. So why would someone go the hard path and instead they could stand in front of a system and go, let's change everything. Here's the quote and let's, let's roll.

Right. So it's anyway. All right, Tim. Well, uh, my dinner is going to be ready in, in like 10 minutes. Yeah. So I hear you. I'll let you go, but this conversation was great and we'll do it again for sure. Thank you.