So let me introduce jessie, actually i'll, just i'll briefly, introduce jesse and then i'll. Let him introduce himself. I guess so. Jesse is the vp of mechanical operations at klos services, which um mostly means that he's the the boss of most of the hvac refrigeration stuff.

That goes on at kalos now, um jesse's been with me for a really long time, actually, first first guy, who ever worked with me at kaylos, doing change outs when he was probably 15 or so, and so it's been, it's been a fun ride. I'll, let you add in whatever, whatever you want to add in jesse, as far as what you do day to day or anything else, you want to mention. Yeah i mean day to day it's um really taking care of clients supporting the team. However, the team needs to be supported.

Obviously, there's a lot of new guys here at kalos. There's a lot of new managers as well new supervisors, so really guiding them through that process on a daily basis and just finding problem areas that we have and finding solutions and how to grow the organization and then the division, individuals within the organization as well. So it's fun, it's it's all about growth and i enjoy it a lot when we say growth uh. I think a lot of people immediately think growth like more employees, more money, but it's it's really about uh personal growth, about growth and maturity, growth in running a better business growth and customer service.

Those are the keys to to running a really good business um. So yeah we've got a lot of owners in here: technicians uh, so that's cool, um, quick kind of rundown of calos, because that's uh the perspective we're gon na be talking from, is obviously our own perspective, but then also perspectives that we've gained from interacting with a Lot of business owners from all over the country and even the world um, that's where i'm coming from jesse's great because from a day in and day out standpoint, he actually thinks about a lot of these things that we're going to talk about today. More than even i do um, but just to kind of give a background um, because a lot of you don't know this. We started a business in 2005.

um. There were started out for three of us and then shortly thereafter, jesse and my brother nathan um, who a lot of you know nathan from his bathtub interview on uh on one of the other channels um, but we've we've been we've been doing this for for a Long time and i've had to kind of learn it from the from the bottom up, so from running maintenance's service calls uh in trucks. All of us have done that. All of us came from that side of things and to some degree we all came into business.

Not not thinking about the money side in a really thorough and thoughtful way and really just kind of imagining that if we were very good at working at least my perspective was if i was very good at working and very good at fixing broken things, then everything Would work out and be hunky-dory, and while fixing broken things and being good at understanding, equipment is very important. It is certainly not everything. It is not the whole story, and so, along the way we've had to have some. You know hard lessons, uh and growing from three of us to now 250 of us, so our perspective today comes from having made pretty much every mistake: we're going to talk through some of those mistakes, we're going to talk through some of the things that we've learned Along the way, um, but also many different sides of the business, so we're not going to just focus on the residential service technician, although that will be a big part of what we talk about, but really the mindset that it takes for every service technician to have Better money, conversations and the title of this was originally money conversations with customers, but i want to talk about it.

Even some other aspects like how to interact appropriately with your employer um how to get to a place where you're consistently when you're talking about money. It's in a really constructive and productive way, so i want to start there and again just just a reminder as you all go, i'm going to be watching the chat periodically and we'll we'll kind of jump in if you have. If you have questions we'll kind of answer, those as we go along, but i want to start with from your perspective jesse, because we've talked a lot about this, we read a book called clockwork business. From your perspective, what is the? What is the first prerequisite? What is the first thing that you have to get right in order for any of the rest of this? To make sense, i would say i mean for any of it to make sense.

I would say the first thing you have to get right is providing the client or your customer with something of value um and then, as far as getting the value, what that value is and getting it dialed in and then it kind of goes from there. But i'd say the first thing is: is really getting customer service providing a really good service to clients. I would say: that's number one from a business standpoint. That would be the number one thing uh, that's where you got to start and i think that's critical, because we all have had experiences with um if any of us who are active on social media, i'm assuming that a lot of the folks who are watching this, You know you're on youtube, so you at least are somewhat active um.

You see this kind of two ends of the spectrum. There's a lot of techs out there who focus on the fixing and that's the only thing they value and they degrade people who uh they'll, call white shirt technicians. You know people who are more sales, techs um, and so there is a there's, a balance between first having something of value to offer to the customer. Even if you're you know like you can say well, customer service comes first and it does.

But customer service has to be underpinned by a service that you're providing. You know something that actually matters, something that's valuable um. So if you think about, for example, maintenance doing uh doing a maintenance, whether it's commercial residential, it doesn't matter um, you can't have good customer service. Unless you have a good service that you're providing right, i mean unless you're cleaning the equipment well, unless you're actually improving it in some way, it doesn't matter how nice of a happy face you put on and what nice words you say: um you have to have That value first yeah yeah i'd absolutely agree with that.

Now there are some people that can create a business without that um, but usually it's it's a hot burn and then bam. It goes out um. You know that's it might last a year, my last two years, but usually it doesn't last a long long time. Usually it burns out pretty quickly.

Now it can burn hot and quick, though i'll tell you yeah, it can burn hot enough that you end up uh. Getting some notoriety, you know creating a coaching group for yourself and feeling like a big shot cause your numbers look good, but the problem is: is it catches up with you because of dissatisfied customers, people who fundamentally have a problem with how you run your business and Dissatisfied employees and everything else, and so providing a good service is the underpinning, and i wanted to mention this first and just talk about this before we go into it, because whenever you're going to talk about money - and that's the topic we're talking about today - a lot Of people get the idea that you're saying that it's all about money - and that certainly is not the case um. But when you are talking about money um, i want you to kind of just kind of take it from there from a very high level. What are some, what are some mistakes that people make when they are talking about money generally and what are some good ways of being when talking about money generally, even before we start to go into the specifics, as far as like mindset, um mannerisms, that sort of Thing um, i mean, i think, making money the number one priority is going to be a negative almost on any given topic, whether you're talking to a client whether you're, talking to your boss, uh, whether you're talking um to it to another manager.

If you make money the number one point of any conversation uh, it's probably not going to go well um, because people tend to feel attacked or threatened pretty quickly. Um. When, when you bring up hey, i need a raise well, you know i need a million dollars. Hey you know this is 500.

Do you want me to do it? Well, what's wrong with it, you know like i. I don't want to just give you 500. I don't want to just give you a raise. I don't want to have to buy a truck for 70 000.

You know i want to know what is the value behind it. So when you make money the number one focus and bring up money money, money? Okay, what is the exchange of value here? I i need to know that, and i think most clients, those customers, most um employers. Most employees need to understand that money comes when you're providing something of value. So what is that value? Let's provide that value and if your end goal is the money? That's fine.

I have no problem with that, but let's provide the value, so we can then get to the money conversation after we've established some value yeah, and i think one mistake that people make broadly - and this is true in personal finances. It's true in a lot of areas is the feeling that um, you are owed something or you deserve something that there is not an explicit agreement for, and so, if somebody agrees so, if you agree to say okay, i'm going to do such and such and then When, once i deliver this service, once i install this unit once i install this capacitor that you have agreed to pay me this money well, that is an agreement right and if somebody says at the end of that uh well, i changed my mind. Well, that's dishonest and moral, all that sort of thing, but how often do we go into business relationships? Do we go into um situations where there's expected to be an exchange of of money and we don't have clarity, but then at the end, we feel like we're being ripped off in some way, because i've worked for you for 10 years and i've only and i'm Only still making this much money or whatever the case may be um where there hasn't been an intentional conversation, an intentional communication where there's been an agreement about what's going to happen, so i think a really big part of all of this is communication about value. So if you're dealing with the customer, you know exactly what's going to be done, what the benefits are about.

What's going to be done, and then at the end of that then talking about the money exchange and then having clarity about, what's going to happen there and um for those of us like me, who really don't like thinking about money or don't think i should have To sometimes i can get into the mindset that, if i'm good at what i do, i deserve it at the end. It should just automatically happen and that's a very destructive mindset, because that other person that i'm expecting it from never agreed to do that right or that what they perceived as an appropriate dollar amount, is significantly different right. Um - and you know i i see this - let's the most basic of scenarios. Is you know you ask somebody hey.

Do you want me to fix your air conditioner with a question? The answer is going to be. Yes, please fix my air conditioner, okay, i'll, get that taken care of and in your mind you may think. Okay, this is a minor repair. It's gon na be 350 miner repair, obviously worth it right.

So then you go through all this work and then you have that money conversation on the back end and what they perceived because maybe use the word like. Oh it's simple, oh, this is really easy fix. I'd only take me 15 minutes right. So they're thinking.

Oh, you know 15 minutes, okay, maybe 40 bucks right and then you sit down all right. It's 350 now you're at a pro. You have an issue because you didn't have the appropriate conversations to establish what your, what value you're, bringing to the table um with them and now now there's disagreement now, there's unmet expectations and now now they start to feel resentment towards whether it be you themselves, the Company, the organization it doesn't matter that resentment's felt and that's and that happens within um within a company internally as well, if it's with your a supervisor and an employee, a boss and their employer manager and their employee when they hit 90 days and nothing happens. Well, what was the conversation that happened and i will say from from a management standpoint as well you're dealing with a lot of people, so sometimes you can make mistakes and forget and not follow up.

So it's important that you do, because if that employee has unmet expectations, that also creates frustration. It's not just on the management, and it's also on the the person that that apprentice. That's working for you that apprentice, that's just starting out in the trade and you as a manager may have a mindset, well man, the third guy on the job. You know i'm investing in his future yeah absolutely, but at the end of the day, if he's learning, he should be working really hard and there should be some form of a mutual agreement, even even on that level.

Yeah and that's that's um integrity, it's good business! It it reduces a lot of pain and suffering um for everybody involved. So there's just a lot of um there's a lot of important things there, let's uh, let's back up even further and just talk generally about um the different ways that people can tend to communicate around expectations, um that you've entered that you've interacted with that you've run Into um i'll give some examples, and and then you can give some examples of of ways that end up going sideways, um i'll give the example of something i'm doing right now. I have uh because i'm finding myself doing it and i always do this and it leads to problems um, i'm helping alex my son with some things around his house and so i've been finding some some different trades people to help out with a few little things. He just bought his first house and it's pretty pretty exciting for us, so um, i'm so excited when i finally find somebody who can do something because, right now, it's so hard in the trades that um, i just give them this blank check, um verbally.

I give them a verbal blank check, i say some version of and i catch myself doing it a lot, do whatever yeah do whatever you think you need to do just just take care of it. Just do what you need to do and the problem with that is: is i'm giving them, even if they are of really high integrity, i'm giving them a responsibility that is not theirs, meaning that, if i think about it in terms of um being fair to them, I'm being unfair to them, i'm not being fair, because i'm not um, i'm not along the way being explicit in my approvals about everything that they're doing and it's putting them in a position where they run a very good chance of not providing me good customer service Because on one hand, i'm giving them the sense that oh nothing matters, but of course it does. You know if they come back with a fifty thousand dollar bill. I'm gon na fly off the handle right.

So that's not fair because there's an assumption that that we just understand how much it's going to be. But but i don't because i don't know everything they do um and so you'll find customers who do that to you and you'll find cases where you do that. To other people, whether it's employees or whomever, where there's an expectation that everybody's going to be quote, unquote fair with each other, but there's no such thing. There's no such dollar amount as fair right, it's completely objective, and so, but one person sees this fair is not the same as what another person sees as fair, and it's not fair to them.

To think that it should be because there is no absolute about this. You know it always comes up with customers and capacitor prices we'll get into that. But you know, like people, think that something a certain markup is acceptable or a certain one, isn't when, at the end of the day, the only person who really knows what that exchange of value should be are the two people who are talking about it with each Other here's, the price, do you agree? Yes, i do? No, i don't. Yes, i do great move forward.

We both agree when it's done. We agree on the quality. That's going to be produced. So that's one example.

But what are some others that you can think of where these sort of unmet expectations lead to lead disappointment or communication breakdowns um yeah i mean i i mean i think one could be. I mean that was from a customer standpoint, um, which pretty straightforward. That's going to be across the board when you say you know, take care of it and we went into that multiple times where it's just like they say, take care of it and seven hundred dollars or a thousand dollars and they're like whoa. That's that's a you know.

I don't know 15 20 of a new system right. I can't be doing that every other month and it's like, oh well, you just said recharge it um, but from a employee standpoint i mean i it may be that hey. You know. I'm going to get you um, i'm going to get you a raise, you know well what what does that look like, or so it could be on that front, you know, is it 50 cents? Is it 25 cents? Is it two dollars? Is it a dollar? What does that look like you know um, so that would be a problem there.

Um also i mean unmet expectations. I mean, i think, when you say you're going to do something it doesn't always have to be about money um, it can be uh. You know i want to ride with you um. You know i want to take you out to lunch, you know and then, if, if you don't follow through uh, then then you're going gon na create that resentment.

So it's just not following through uh, will create that resentment as well or, if you say, you're gon na, do something for a client and you agree to the dollar amount. And then you don't accomplish that task and the manner that they think you should have done it or that you should have done it. That's also going to be a pretty pretty difficult conversation and then the money will come back into that conversation because they had a false expectation of the scope of work um. So then they will try to bring that money back in, because what you perform is less value than they anticipated yeah.

So those would just be two examples, yeah so from i think, to kind of nail down what we're saying here to start with um, you can't have good money conversations unless you have clarity about money, um and so having clarity about money is not something that should Be avoided, it's part of good customer service. It's part of good value conversations um, but it is not the most important part um, but it is a part that has to be there. Otherwise, you will just like anything else. Just like you know, saying you're going to give somebody a you know: a 16 seer, you know train and then you give them a 14 seer, goodman um and say well, what's the problem, you know i thought they were just as good.

You know like it's like. Okay, well, you didn't do what you said you were going to do. The same thing is true on the money side, which is also why and - and i want your stance - i want your take on this because we - actually - i don't know that we've actually talked on this, but i talked about this, but i would say that anytime, anything's Going to cost more um, you have to have an explicit conversation with the customer about that, just as an absolute rule. So if something's going to cost more than what you told them, regardless of whether or not you're going to do it at cost or you're going to do it cheap or you're, giving them a good deal, you have to be explicit about that increase in expense.

Would you agree with that? Absolutely yeah yeah, there's um and i would say i mean so yes to answer your question, but certain people are gon na shy away from money conversations um certain people will say. Oh it's not important. You know the service i'm providing is extreme value. Obviously it's they're going to want to pay for it, so you have two sides of it and then sometimes people are going to get in their own head of.

I don't know if this is worth it. You know um, it doesn't matter what type of person you are that conversation needs to happen just has to yeah, and there are segments of the industry where people work on time and material a lot, and all of that is built into the agreement. In the first place, so i'm certainly not saying if you're you know, working in grocery refrigeration and part of your contract is that if you work so many hours, you get paid so much that you have to go back to the customer every time. But anything that's going to be outside of the scope of the agreement, and you have to be clear on what that is.

You need to go back and have that communication with the customer, no matter how painful um that that may be uh the whole general sense that we can get after a while of well, it needs to be done. You know you hear that all the time! Well, it needs to be done um. Well, it needs to be done. If everybody agrees it's going to be done and everybody is okay with paying for it, and we understand what's being done, i'm saying it needs to be done because somebody's going to be without air products going to get lost.

It needs to be done if it's part of the scope of the agreement. If it's not part of the scope of the agreement, then you better get a new agreement. Otherwise folks are going to be upset or you know, or somebody's going to lose money. Somebody's going to be on the hook for something and all too often it's the contractor.

All too often it's the um, it's the folks who do what we do and that's a really bad thing. It's bad for and technicians might think. Well, why do i care? You know it doesn't affect my pay. Well, yeah it does it does.

It may take a little while, but it does it's just like people who say you know, there's some funny lines that people use um. They come to mind right off. The bat uh like if there's a uh, if there's an accident on a job, uh, auto accident safety problem comp, whatever um somebody gets hurt, something gets destroyed. People say well, that's why you got insurance right as if like well, no biggie.

I got insurance, it's like no, it's not how it works like you, they get it back. They always get it back. That's how insurance works uh over the life cycle of your business you're, going to end up paying for that uh over again another one that people say is well it's a tax write-off. It's like, i think you misunderstand what a tax write-off means.

A tax write-off means that it's an expense and therefore it's not profit, so you don't have to pay taxes on it, but that also means that you don't get to keep the money and nobody gets it in the organization. It's still an expense right and so there's just silly things that we sometimes think um and again i've been on the other side of it. I've worked for a very large organization, um as a technician, so i can get that emotion, sometimes it's sort of like. Ah, it's no skin off my nose.

You know it's just above my pay grade, but things that cost money cost you money. They just do um roundabout. At the end of the day, it's going to cost you money as well, so as technicians tending to those conversations making sure that you're preventing um problems with money is going to in the end. Uh help you um, because it makes you more valuable, correct, correct, which also and going back to that again.

We'll talk a little bit more about this, but that's what you want to be really keen to notice um as a technician as an employee of an organization. If you are an employee is be be very sensitive to noticing areas in which you are being of high value and you are being profitable in areas where you are not um, because the areas where you are not are areas that you can improve to make more Money and the areas where you are are areas that you can use to help present your value when you're having conversations in order to demonstrate that to your employer, so always always kind of having those things in mind, make for really productive conversations. It's the same thing that you do with clients as well and we're gon na we're gon na talk more about that. So i want to move into some more specific areas, because i think you know we can talk from 50 000 feet all day long, but i want to.

I want to move into some specifics and, let's start with service repairs, we're going to talk about warranty, we're going to talk about system sales, we're going to talk about maintenance, but i want to start with service repairs. Um talk a little bit about because, because i think it's going to be helpful to uh just call out the fact that for years and years and years we struggled with profitability and residential service. Like really struggled big time struggled and when i say we struggled i'm saying like we like me and you and bert and other people who physically did the work struggled to be profitable, we're not just being business talk here, we're saying like we were the ones and We were really good at what we did. We were very good yeah.

We customers were happy, we had low call back rates um, we were growing, we had a really great reputation, um yeah yeah. We could pump out some calls. I mean there's a lot of things that we did really well, i mean our trucks were all crap and you know it was. It was kind of about the skin, of our teeth sometimes, and we never saw our families, but you know hey.

We were in a good business right by one by one sense, and i was in in to some degree i was very proud of that, but we always struggled on the money side. So i want you to just riff on that, a little bit why that was and what we've learned along the way um on that on that service repairs, side of things, okay, um, so i think you know one of the reasons we struggled with that um is Because when we looked at our pricing in general, we always did absolutely best case scenario: never a callback, never anticipating a callback, never anticipating a warranty, call on a component. You know even on a new system. You know never anticipating, we'll, have to go back and replace the txp, never anticipating that we might have to swap out a coil or a compressor, easy one capacitor.

You know condenser fan motor, never anticipating that in the original price, so the original price - you you look at it like well, how are we not making money, but one out of five? You had to go back for one thing or another right, so that's creating additional roles truck rolls that cost you a lot of money and sometimes it might be something like hey. I can't figure out how to program the thermostat hey. I can't figure out wi-fi hey. It's not connected to wi-fi um, so i think that was one key part of it and that went from everything from actual system replacement to capacitor replacement to drain cleaning, never factoring in additional costs that come along with touching somebody's piece of equipment or replacing somebody's equipment.

You're tied to that customer you're tied to that client for some time - and you have to factor in - i don't know if it's uh additional 10, maybe um on every component to factor in for that 10 possibility of having to go back and redo that scope of Work uh or touch base with that client again, so i think that was number one. Um number two would be us. You know we were very young um. We both were pretty frugal.

You married leilani she's extremely frugal yeah jesse's, my brother-in-law, by the way, so they they both have frugal uh frugal jeans yeah. So i was, i was very money or price, conscious, um and always wanted to pack in that value. You know so i would go somewhere and um, it might be a capacitor, and i noticed the drain line was really dirty and i was like you know i'll. Just i'll just do the drain line for you as well.

I just threw in the capacitor. It only took me 15 minutes to replace the capacitor and it's gon na. Take me another 25-30 minutes to clean out the drain line and oh there's also some damaged wires. Let me fix that, while i'm out here it's just electrical tape: um, i'm gon na just tape it up just as a precaution right.

So then i roll out of there. I think at that point we're charging 75 bucks for a capacitor, fully installed dual cap um. So we we walk away um, i think we're at 65 bucks for a truck roll. We walk away with 145, you know and i spend every bit of an hour there.

I spend 30 minutes driving each way, so i'm probably two two three hours deep in this call and walking away with 145 bucks um. You just can't make money you just and and but it's true we would do five or six of those a day um and then we might have another. You know a call back or a warranty call or a quote that we were doing because again, we were doing quotes too, where we were actually talking to clients for an hour or two on top of all this right, never factoring that into our price or an Expense, so, at the end of the day you feel like man, i busted my ass. I worked 12 hours and i brought in 600 and that's just not gon na cut it you're just you're, just not gon na make money.

So i think those are the two biggest things um from a service standpoint and then a pricing standpoint too. So we had, we had to shift, definitely had to shift a little bit of that um. I think a lot of people so a lot of people when they start a business, they think to themselves. Well, i work somewhere else, but they're inefficient and they've got some richy rich pants at the top who's, sucking all the profits away from the business.

And so when i start this business, i'm going to be able to do a great job. I'm going to charge cheap prices, everybody's going to love me there's going to be hearts and flowers, but it's funny how people with that sort of mindset don't do well like and again i'm not i'm not criticizing, because i am one of those people um you just Don't do well, you end up the more work you get, the worse, you do um and that's a sign of a systematic problem, and that systematic problem is twofold like, like you said one is that you're not charging enough period and usually the easiest way to do That is to take a block of time and take a few months period. Not a single call, don't stop analyzing single calls like that because it ends up. I mean you can do that once you know your numbers, but, prior to it you get a sense.

Like 140 bucks, that's great. I made a lot of money right, but so it seems like a lot but you're not analyzing it over a period of time. Look at what you actually made gross over a chunk of time. Look at your expenses and do the math on what are your cost of goods sold? What is your gross margin? What is your overhead, and now it becomes very clear that you're not making you're not hitting the numbers that you need to hit in order to have a sustainable business, not just a business that kicks out some decent profit without uh capital expenditure without paying yourself.

But a business that kicks out decent net profit after all of those things after you buy vans after you, you know you have appropriate advertising after you are paying yourself a decent wage and able to bonus your your key employees, who are helping to run the business And making sure that you're giving people consistent pay increases as they go and those sorts of things um it becomes really challenging. So from a business standpoint and again, i know this is talking about technicians, but it's important that technicians understand this from people who have done this. Who had this mindset that probably a lot of you have and it's not wrong. It just doesn't work in terms of running a business.

It's it's nice for people who like to do things cheap for people. You know, i guess, there's nothing wrong with liking to do that right, but the problem is that mindset ends up running you out of business and it ends up creating a lot more heartache for your families, because you end up having to do so much work in Order to try to make ends meet so getting your pricing right is one thing and another thing: is you don't want to run a business where you're so proud of how many service calls you run? You should run a business where you're trying to run fewer calls and doing more things of value on every call you run, which it comes down to this in terms of service repairs. This idea of bundling, which we talk about a lot in flat rate people, talk about this there's. You know there's flat rate systems out there like new flat rate, which really is focuses around this there's some things about it that make me uncomfortable with some of those other systems which we won't talk about here, but uh, but we learned that bundling things together is A really valuable thing so still doing the things that we used to do where you find additional problems where you're doing the drain line with the capacitor and also making the wire repair and neatening everything up and all that sort of thing.

But thinking about that pricing a little different! So just talk about that briefly and how you've kind of implemented that as we've gone along yeah, so one thing we would see um doing it. The previous way that we were doing it where we weren't charging enough and we were trying to take care of only the primary issue for the most part, especially when we got rushed, especially once it hit. You know: 3. 30.

4 o'clock, five o'clock, six o'clock, seven o'clock, i mean you're pulling up to a call throwing in a capacitor and saying heck. I got five more calls. I got to do you know dude. You know and you're almost at the point where you hardly want to charge a customer, because you just want to get out of there, because you know you got five calls left right, so it went from kind of that mindset to well.

We got to, i would say, a pretty bad place, um financially, where it's just like holy crap like we're, we're really working hard and it's we can't flip and make money. We just can't make money right. So then, then, that's when our mind shift kind of changed. Okay, let's slow this process down um and also doing it that way, where you're only fixing the primary issue results in a higher callback rate it just does and when you have to go back out 20 days later 30 days later, it doesn't matter.

If it's two months later, that customer is going to have a money conversation, i just paid you guys, you were just out here and us being the businessman that we were at that time. You're right, i was just out here i'll just charge you for the drain cleaning. Today, that's 65 right right, two hours later that call's done for 65 and i do the math it's it's not enough to roll a truck and pay somebody that's trying to build a business um and then buy a new truck and overhead. It just doesn't work right.

So we realized that hey, okay, this this isn't working so now our what we do is, let's, let's focus on fixing everything we can on that system, really slowing that process down spending 30 minutes. So our process right now is we want to spend 30 minutes diagnosing that system that looks like talking to the customer having a quick five-minute conversation, letting them show you around and say: okay, i'm gon na go through the entire system. Um after i've looked over everything. I'm gon na, let you know what i found and um we'll we'll go from there.

It usually takes me, you know some. If you're an experienced tech, you can say. Usually it takes me. You know 30.

40 minutes. If you're junior say you know, depending on the difficulty um, it could take me 30 minutes could take me an hour and a half just depending on how difficult it is right if you're over an hour and you haven't figured it out, call for backup um, i Mean there's you're stuck at that point. If it's, if you're over an hour, just call somebody you need some, you need some support. Um experience, tech, i mean you're gon na know everything that's wrong with that system within 30 minutes right.

So you have a really nice conversation. You establish i'm going to look over everything and then we're going to have a conversation, and that conversation includes value. What services you provide for them. Okay, this isn't money conversation, it's just value.

This is what i'm bringing to the table for you right yep. So then you go through everything you look at the thermostat. Is it programmable? Is it nice? Is it beat up? Is it hanging off the wall? Okay, you know. What's the return air grill look like? Is the filter in there? Then you go to the indoor unit.

Is it running blah blah blah go through your standard diagnosis right, but you're? Looking at the drain, you're looking at the evap you're, looking at the blower wheel, you're checking that capacitor on the inside. If it, if it's a psc motor you're, looking at the wiring you're looking for routes, you're looking for straws you're looking for growth on the plenum right you're, looking at the platform, is it sagging sinking? How old is the system um then you're going outside? So you, you know you're taking notes in a dirty drain line, not the primary cause. You know blower wheel, a little bit of dust a little bit of build up. Then you go to the outside.

Then you fully diagnose that portion of it right. So you check the capacitors. Look at the contactors. Look at the condenser coils check the amp draw on the outdoor fan motor.

You know, is it wobbling condition, um doesn't need tune-up? Has it been neglected? General condition you find its capacitor is the condenser buried in the dirt. Is it right? You know, you know all that obvious kind of stuff yeah are the wires rubbing out high voltage on the suction line. You know low voltage wires. Have they been hit with a weed hacker, so you're, looking at all this stuff and you're, just notating everything that if you got this system to um as good of condition as you could, what would it look like so then we take that you're gon na have Maybe four, maybe five things right that you could do that would slight, you know, fix the system and then slightly improve it.

So i'm gon na take the top three off that list and i'm going to put those into a price. Let's say it's a capacitor drain line and securing wires, since we were on that train so right so now i have a capacitor which we adjusted our pricing, which is more than that. Now we have a call out fee. We have a drain line cleaning and then we have you know repairing some low voltage wires right, bundle that all in and then you're going to say to get your system working properly.

It's going to be 450 additional recommendations, um condenser wash additional recommendation to that. A condenser wash or preventative maintenance that would be an additional recommendation right again: you're selecting things that provide a true value and will prevent you having to go back out to that client's home for the next six months to a year, because that's always my goal once They spend money with me. I don't want to go back out there. One creates customer frustration.

Two, it's not profitable, let's take care of everything, so they're good to go for the next year or so right. So that's how i look at it, whereas if, if i do half of the stuff now - and i have to come back six months from now and do the other half of the stuff now that customer is frustrated and spent more money, because now you had to Pay for a secondary trip fee right and lord forbid, it's going to happen on the weekend yeah. So why not address all these high um? These issues that really need to be taken care of that are gon na cause. Failure down the road dirty drain line, prime example: you know wires starting to rub out or get damaged.

You know that happens all the time. You know you get a heavy rainstorm out there and those wires are all coming apart and bam. You blow a fuse, so i pick those top three. Then i do okay, condenser wash.

What is that going to do? Well, that's going to improve the system, efficiency or, if you don't want, if you're interested in a maintenance plan, you can also do a maintenance plan. There's kind of two sides of this, though, so we're adding value we're getting that system working properly, we're preventing callbacks, which makes you look good as a technician and we're completing enough tasks where now our ticket's 450 bucks right, but we're also giving that customer additional things That they could do that empowers them to say no yeah customers need the ability to tell you. No because then they know they are in charge which they absolutely are. But if you don't give them an opportunity to say no to something, then they are going to feel like.

I need to do my due diligence and nitpick this invoice, yeah or nitpick this value this this technician's, bringing to me right. Let me pause right there, because this is a key cycle. This is a huge psychology thing that we've learned um, that i've learned is that um, i'm the guy who's gon na say. If i have the money, i'm gon na say: do it all i'm that guy? I'm just gon na say: do it all i always say: do it all to everything, even stuff that i don't think matters i'm just that person, because i don't wan na, have problems i'm completely motivated by not having future heartache and not having to talk about money With people so service writer comes to me and says: hey here's! This laundry list, blah blah blah tyler um, was making fun of me the other day, one of our one of our sales guys because he's like man you'd, be my perfect customer, because i could sell you everything and it's like it's true.

You could that's my mindset and so a percentage of customers, maybe 15 20, are going to be. That way, that's great because that's what they want right. I want that. I want somebody's going to come in give me a full package solutions and that sort of thing, but there's a lot of people, probably even a higher percentage, who want to feel who are more cynical and they want to feel like they've, got some ability to negotiate.

If you're just going in saying it's your capacitor, it's going to be whatever 120 dollars, that's it! That's all you've said so now their only way to negotiate is to beat you up on the price of that capacitor right go in and say, here's this happens. Every time there's these three things that are high value and it's 450. well now it gives them the ability to say well what about this thing? What happens if we pull that out and it gives them a position where they can kind of negotiate, or they can say well i'll, do this, but i don't want to do this and gives them some autonomy. It gives them some agency to work on it and that's great because at that point, they're not beating you up on what you need to make they're beating you up on something that you've already pre-assembled go ahead and that customer, that's brian, says yeah heck.

Let's do the maintenance plan or you know what i don't want to have to worry about. Getting you out here and doing them scheduling all that crap just wash the condenser i'll be good to go right. Yeah i mean at that point we pretty much checked off a pm, you're good to go for the next year, six months to a year, you're good to go so no worries right and me as a business owner. I would much rather you select the condenser wash.

I don't want to have to put you on schedule for a pm right, because by this point i anticipate the system's going to work really well we're going to have a great experience, you're gon na say last time i called kalos. I had no issues for two years. You know my previous ac companies. It seemed like they're out here every every other month right and it may have been every six months, but it feels like every other month because they're just doing the bare minimum.

So anyways you go in hey brian, you know i went over the entire system as we discussed, and i found a couple different issues. Um those are going to be. You know a really really dirty drain line, a failed capacitor which is causing the system not to function properly. In addition to that, i found some low voltage wires that are on the brink of shorting out, which could cause system failure to take care of.

All of that for you today, it's going to be 375 plus the 75 dollar trip fee which comes out to 450 dollars. One thing i wanted to note in addition to that, so don't let them interject yet one thing i want to note in addition to that, the outdoor coil is a little bit dirty perfectly normal, but that causes the system to run a little bit higher head pressure At the end of the day, it's less efficient, so your power bill is going to be a little bit higher um. I can also wash that that would be an additional 65 bucks um that involves you, know, cleaning out the weeds around it, pulling the top off cleaning out all the sediment at the bottom spraying it down with cleaners and really getting that clean. So that way it can breathe, easy and run efficiently.

So that's one option - or we could do you know hold off on that today and schedule a preventative maintenance for later on down the road right so now you've taken that entire 450 off the table. That's not even a money conversation anymore, the money conversation has been become about 65 or a tune-up plan right, so you're, anticipating, yes, you want working air conditioning assist, you know so now they shift their focus to do. I want to have my condenser coil washed, or do i want a maintenance plan right, so they're going to say yes or no? If it's brian he's going to say yeah, let's do the condenser coil. If it's me i'll, do it myself, you know i'll wash that condenser coil but go ahead and take care of the other stuff.

You know, okay, so just sign off here initial, you know 375 plus the 75 equaling grand total is gon na, be 450 bucks uh. It's going to take me a little while so i'm going to go ahead and do that um. If you have any questions or want to watch it watch me feel free to do that and i'll get started. I'm gon na leave this invoice here with you.

You can leave it there, you can take it with you, it doesn't matter right, but you have had a nice clean conversation with them and they've selected their options, and you go. Do your thing right. Technicians, of course, want to argue so they're going to say well what if they say, i don't want the wire repair, not a problem. We don't have to do the wire repair, but that's going to be that's going to be probably 5 of people.

I'm telling you it's me: five, ten percent of people and the the money conversation becomes so much easier. I've done this over and over again, and i've taught my technicians to do this. How to have these conversations with clients right and our clients they're. So much happier our call rates are so much lower.

Our profitability makes so much sense. Now, our our texts today running seven, eight, nine ten calls. No, you know five six busy day, seven um, but they're spending more time there right now. They don't have to be rushed now.

They can really make sure those terminals are tight, they're on there. They need to cut off a terminal. They can redo that they can spend in you know an extra hour. They can spend an hour and a half doing those two tasks with a grand total of two hours on that job site and they're fine did we smash it out of the ballpark? Is it a home run? No, but it's steady, consistent profitability on service calls yeah and so uh.

One one objection that a lot of people throw in and there's a few people kind of alluding to it in chat is that okay, that's fine for residential, but this sort of thing doesn't work in commercial. What are your thoughts on that um? My thoughts would be. Have you tried it uh one, but but to give that question or concern a little bit more weight, um, that's: okay, i've i've dealt with um commercial clients and, depending on what type of commercial clients you're looking at um, i mean we do a lot of tnm Time, materials right you go to a you, go to, let's say what what what's a storage facility uh that we're working on hey, chad, we don't name customer names on youtube, live streams, all right. Let's say: let's go to a random client and uh he's like yeah.

This this system's not working right, so you get there. You pull up. You have a quick conversation. He shows you, the thermostat walks you around.

You know what areas it's affecting right. So then you go crawl up on the roof. Um i mean we have a minimum of an hour right plus any materials. Same thing: okay, let's say it's a capacitor, i'm gon na look at the belt.

I'm going to look at the condenser coil, i'm going to look at the filters. I'm going to look at that unit. That's 30 feet away from me and i'm going to say how's that condenser coil how's that fan motor sound, how what's the temperature of the air coming out of that one right, i'm getting paid tnm, so i'm getting paid for my time. Why do i want to get out of there in 30 minutes again? I want this customer not to have to call me back for six months to a year, i'm looking at the drain line, and i had a conversation with an owner of a local business here.

He said man i'm struggling, he doesn't use us, but he's he's a close friend of mine he's like no. They they come out. They charge me for the trip. Then they send me a quote for this and then they come out.

They fix that and then six months later, six weeks later, something else breaks he said like how are the prices i just i just feel like i'm getting nickel and dimed here. So i look at the prices. The prices are fine, they're, just not taking care of anything at one time, so if they would look at the entire equipment, his entire facility and say what actually needs to be addressed to get all of these systems working properly right yeah. So that's that's what i would say i mean you know, depending on your clientele base.

There are there's some tough cookies out there, i'm not saying there aren't, but i'm saying for the most most clients, they're gon na value you really taking care of their equipment. That's what they want you to do. They want you to take care of their equipment. They don't want the ac to stop working right and we tend to get in our own heads of that's a lot of money right, but these people i mean, if they're business owners these people.

Yes, they want to make profit, but they also understand hey. If we do it right, the first time, i'm not going to have to keep paying over and over and over right and now, if you charge an astronomical amount, they're going to have higher expectations right or if you promise, you know a whole bunch of services, everything's Going to be great they're, going to have a slightly higher expectation, so be aware of that um, but you should be producing a better system and yes, there will be times where somebody spends seven hundred dollars getting everything right. You know get it's all dialed in and then their compressor blows right, but you know what you can do if you're a profitable company you can take that off of system replacement. No right you can afford to take care of it.

Yeah! That's actually a really! That's something jesse and i have talked about a lot is um and it's been a huge motivator for me because for me sometimes - and it's to my own shame - sometimes i fail to be appropriately motivated by profitability. But one thing that really motivates me is that when you are profitable, you can make headache customers go away because you can afford to just throw whatever you need to add it in order to make it go away, which is which is great, and that is a Really nice place to be in business and we finally got into the place that we can do that regularly, and it really is it's the amazon approach, right, amazon doesn't nickel and dime people and they want to return stuff. They just take it back right. They just they eat the loss and they take it back because they know that overall, they're, profitable and overall, it's a better business model to not have to argue with everybody about everything and that isn't to say that you're not being thorough about money.

Conversations in the same way that amazon is thorough about what the price of something is going to be. You know they're not like hiding it um and they're, not always worried about being the cheapest on everything, but it's set up in such a way that, if there's a problem you can just take care of it. So that's that's really big and for a lot of us i think that's a it's a great way to great way to run a business. Um ghetto talks about that all the time um, all of a sudden.

His name is escaping me, um uh, but anyway he talks about that all the time about uh, the owner of ghetto about how, if there's a problem with the customer, he can afford to just replace the entire equipment and that's the approach.