The latest episode of HVAC Success Secrets: Revealed is a treasure trove of insights! Evan and Thaddeus sat down with industry titans Jim Sloan and George Eliadis to discuss the transformative power of technology in HVAC dispatching and service.
Don't miss this deep dive into the impact of tech on HVAC service delivery. Tune in, get inspired, and join the conversation on how innovation can fuel growth in your business.
Find Jim:
On The Web: https://www.trmillerheatingandcooling.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TRMillerNow
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@trmillernow
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trmillernow/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-sloan-9b95812ab/
Find George:
On The Web: https://www.probookdispatch.com/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-eliadis/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/probook_dispatch/
Join Our Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hvacrevealed
Presented By On Purpose Media: https://www.onpurposemedia.ca/
For HVAC Internet Marketing reach out to us at info@onpurposemedia.ca or 888-428-0662
Sponsored By:
Chiirp: https://chiirp.com/hssr
Elite Call: https://elitecall.net
Coach2Close: https://coach-2-close.com/
The latest episode of HVAC Success Secrets: Revealed is a treasure trove of insights! Evan and Thaddeus sat down with industry titans Jim Sloan and George Eliadis to discuss the transformative power of technology in HVAC dispatching and service.
Don't miss this deep dive into the impact of tech on HVAC service delivery. Tune in, get inspired, and join the conversation on how innovation can fuel growth in your business.
Find Jim:
On The Web: https://www.trmillerheatingandcooling.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TRMillerNow
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@trmillernow
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trmillernow/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-sloan-9b95812ab/
Find George:
On The Web: https://www.probookdispatch.com/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-eliadis/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/probook_dispatch/
Join Our Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hvacrevealed
Presented By On Purpose Media: https://www.onpurposemedia.ca/
For HVAC Internet Marketing reach out to us at info@onpurposemedia.ca or 888-428-0662
Sponsored By:
Chiirp: https://chiirp.com/hssr
Elite Call: https://elitecall.net
Coach2Close: https://coach-2-close.com/
Hey, welcome back to another episode of HVAC Success Secrets Revealed with Thaddeus and Evan. We were at the AHR Expo live from Chicago for this in 2024. You might know us, we're in a different thing, background than what we were there. We were actually, back home was the last podcast of the event and we definitely saved, I think, the best for last. No disrespect to everybody else that was on the podcasts beforehand, but Jim Sloan, George Eliadis Jim Sloan with TR Miller local Chicago product. They're just now are outside. George Eliadis with ProBook they dropped some fire on today's episode. It was absolutely amazing the two of them, what they have going on with inside the business. Evan, what was your favorite part of that episode?
Evan Hoffman:Yeah and I think it's important to acknowledge the fact to like Jim and his brother started the business they're running almost a 30 million company now. I had 25 million last year doing an incredible job with what they've got going on there and then George and his team with Probook doing an unreal job with something that's going to be a game changer with dispatch and that was the thing that we got into with what they're doing at Probook is being able to dispatch for dollars, but doing it using data, not feelings and how can you leverage technology cause it's getting better and better by the day to be able to improve your business. Get better results, get the right tech at the right job, at the right time, and making sure that you're staying as efficient as possible because efficiency is sexy. Thad what about you?
Thaddeus Tondu:All of it, it like, we talked a lot of different things with inside of this podcast, talking about moving into the next stage of the business and developing leaders with inside of it. But I think that the biggest part is removing the emotion from everything like you alluded to already. It takes every emotional aspect out of the decision making process. There's gonna be no more favoritism based off of what they're doing with inside of it. But the other part, too, is they actually broke a record for the amount of calls that were booked and the time that they had everybody home. I'm not going to spoil it because that was a fantastic part of the episode, but we want to hear from you, of course, what your favorite part of today's episode was. So leave a note down in the comments on what your favorite part was. But without and of course we wouldn't be able to do our podcast and be on the road interviewing great individuals without sponsors. So make sure you take a listen to our sponsors. Chiirp, Elite Call and On Purpose Media. Let's go ahead and start with elite call and hey, look, they're a us based call center for the home services. They've actually been around for 20 years and been outbounding client databases, filling dispatch boards with service and sales opportunities, boosting memberships like no other. They don't make just calls either. They actually directly integrate right into the business, integrate your CRM, giving you a seamless experience. So let elite call connect with your customers first, visit them today at elitecall.net.
Evan Hoffman:And if they're not answering the phone call. You got to transform your home service business with Chiirp, the ultimate automation toolbox, capture more leads, connect instantly, skyrocket your sales. Chiirp integrates seamlessly into platforms like Service Titan and Housecall Pro offering those automated texts, the email follow ups, even ringless voicemails, boost your Google reviews and your customer loyalty and what we're talking about today. Rehashing through the text message and email follow ups getting in front of your customers more frequently schedule your demo today and get an exclusive 25 percent off your first three months visit chirp.com/hssr that's Chiirp with two I's C H I R P. com slash H S R to boost your revenue today.
Thaddeus Tondu:Perfect! And if you want more opportunities, we'll hit us up onpurposemedia.ca, your go to home service marketing company. Yeah. Websites. Check that off. Increased visibility on search engines. Yep. Big old check mark there. Targeted traffic through effective pay per click ads also a big old check turn your online presence into a powerhouse. Hit up onpurposemedia.ca. Powerhouse of lead generation. onpurposemedia.ca is where you want to go for that.
Evan Hoffman:But we definitely want to hear from you too. So drop a link down below. Let us know what you liked and enjoy the show.
INTRO:Welcome to HVAC Success Secrets Revealed, a show where we interview industry leaders and disruptors, revealing the success secrets to create and unleash the ultimate HVAC business. Now your hosts, Thaddeus and Evan.
Thaddeus Tondu:Hey, welcome back to another episode of HVAC Success Secrets Revealed with Thaddeus and Evan where we have good conversations with good people and any good conversation worth having is worth having drunk. So cheers to my friends.
Evan Hoffman:Cheers.
Thaddeus Tondu:Yes. Cheers. Last one. Ding ding. All right and today we have on Jim Sloan from TR Miller and we have George Eliadis from Probook and be a fascinating conversation. I know what I asked Jim to explain a little bit what Probook does. He found a post in screenshot and sent it to me. He's this is going to be easier for me to explain and so it was pretty neat to see what you guys have. On the go here and so thanks again for taking the time. Those that don't know Jim and T. R. Miller, you guys have been made a name for yourself over the last couple of years, growing from 2 million to
Jim Sloan:a big number So 25 million last year, and we're budgeted for 29 this year.
Thaddeus Tondu:Nice. So 2 million to 230 million in six, seven years, six years, it's a pretty good growth ride to be on and pro book and what you guys are doing and just how you stumbled upon what you guys have with service tight and it's going to be fascinating conversation. So cool. Yeah. So let's start Jim, why don't we go with you and a little bit about your backstory, your history in a condensed version. Cause I know that there's a long story and a lot of story and I think that even like a second podcast, we got to get Brian on here, get Brian on here, get you both on. I think it'll be interesting but yeah, walk us through, a short history on you guys and how you guys came to be.
Jim Sloan:Yeah, so short history. My dad bought I would call it a dumpster fire of a new construction company in 2008. Just that story. He ran it pretty okay as a tradesman that bought a company. Brian and I went to work for it, swept floors, cleaned toilets, got into the field. Parents went through a rough divorce in 2014. It was nasty actually, it was terrible. Like at one point, my dad had to borrow money from my mom to pay payroll. So it got really interesting mom exited the business. Brian and I didn't know how to run a business. We were trades guys so we went found an organization called next star and 2017 and really started building the foundation of the business and then grew it to here. We opened, we were in HVAC mostly did new construction, commercial, everything and then we just focused on home service and got really good at it and then open plumbing and open sewer and just went off to the races. it's a long journey, long story we'll get to it another day. Yeah. So really I was in the field for 10 years doing like project management, stuff like that. Had to learn how to be a leader. XR definitely helped with that and yeah, here we are. I oversee our branch in Plainfield. We'll do about 25 million this year of the revenue. So about a hundred employees under me. It's been fucking interesting going to be like humping furnaces to lead men and women. It's a different world.
Thaddeus Tondu:All right. It's so often in business, it gets talked about that it's easy once you have a few employees, but once you get your first leader, and then you have to get more leaders and then now it's not necessarily about developing everybody in the organizations, but developing leaders within the organization and be able to take it where you need to go.
Jim Sloan:Yeah and I think oftentimes a lot of people take like their best service tech or best performing person and put them in the leadership role. That's a fucking nightmare. It usually doesn't work out. Now you're losing a good employee. So we had to go through that and then many times did you do it before you figured it out? It was a fucking nightmare and I love the guy personally, it was just nasty. And when COVID hit, we looked around and we said, why the hell are we dealing with a pain in the butt? Like we need to solve this and so unfortunately it didn't work out and that was a lesson learned. We've also taken some good people. Cody's sitting over here. He's from the field. He worked for us for 12 years and he kills it. He shreds it we don't have to worry about what he's doing. So it can work out too. I think you got to find a mentors like mentors in general. I think we found a lot of people in the industry that mentored us. Chris Hoffman is a prime example of helping us go from 25 to 100. When we were 2 million, we found a mentor to help us get to 10 million. Then we got to 10 million and we found a mentor to help us get it to 20 and so I think yeah, it's been a fun journey. So building leaders and finding mentors.
Thaddeus Tondu:Cool and then somewhere along the line, we ran into these guys. You ran into these guys. George walk us through your guys story and how it came to be.
George Eliadis:Yeah. So in high school, I started a power washing company, upstate New York and we worked in five counties on our service area and we spent half our day in the truck, just driving call to call and our time was our income. So obviously spending half a day in the truck was pretty problematic and then I got to school to study engineering and I was like, what if I can build some software to cut this driving time down? And I tried selling it to my local buddies and power washing and realize that, these guys all use pen and paper selling software to them. It's just not going to work and so then we got introduced to a painting company in Havertown, Pennsylvania, this company Nolan Painting and we ended up building like a custom routing and scheduling tool for them and, they still pay us to this day. They're our first customer, but we realized painting's not a great fit because, painting crews are on a job site for a whole day they go to a job in the morning, they leave, they go back to it the next day. So there's no, the routing problems, not really dynamic. It wasn't solving the problem that we had hoped to solve and we ended up actually adding value just because we did their six estimators that were going to four sales calls every day. But again, painting wasn't a great fit just because to get a company with six estimators, they've got to be really big and most of them have, one estimator tops and on top of that, they're all using a different CRM. So we realized we had to go to HVAC plumbing, the home services and we made that pivot about a year ago and we tried doing, cold email and cold call and we got a couple of owners to let us see their shops out by where we go to school in Pennsylvania. But, we didn't have a product we didn't know enough about the industry. So nothing really happened until. We went to ACA in New Orleans last April, and we met Jim's brother, Brian, and Mark, the marketing guy, on the very first day, the first guys we met. And we had a couple of beers that night we met up the next day at the conference, went to dinner, ended up on Bourbon Street and the rest is history. They ended up buying us some flight tickets to come out because, they saw us as innovators and hungry to learn the processes of what we're trying to build, even though we didn't have a product yet after flying out there in May, I think it was over the summer, I spent like a month there and we designed the product more and we've been, buddies and working together ever since.
Jim Sloan:Yeah, it's way better than that. That was very like professional. So he actually teacher you some beads? Is that what happened? Yeah, it was like so my mom had passed away and we had a celebration of life on a Saturday and just got hammed had a party till 2 in the morning at my house, had to catch a flight to New Orleans at 9am and it was by having chance. So Chris, that we were talking about earlier, he had invited Brian on a panel. That's the only reason we were at ACA, like we weren't going to go and so we're like, all right, we're gonna fly on Tuesday, leave after the panel, quick trip we need to be home. We're traveling a lot and then we won an award for marketing and so we're like, fuck we're going to have a celebration of life and then catch a 9 am flight to be at some award show by 1 I didn't make the award show. I got to the hotel and went to the hotel room. So Brian texted me and he's hey dude, I met these kids, like they're super smart they got some dispatch software ideas. Why don't you come down and meet them? And I'm like, LSU women's basketball, when they won the championship, we were there that night and I'm like, oh fuck, I got to get out of bed. So I got ready I went down, met them, had a blast. We had some friends there. Chris, Bobby Hamilton was there. I don't know if you guys are familiar with Copper Point and Brad Bacon, who owns a Bacon in Texas and we all went out for a couple of days, had a blast and their thing was like, hey, these kids are really smart. They're going to create some cool shit for our industry. Make sure you help them out yeah, we're like, hey, why don't you fly in, come stay at Brian's house in his guest room, only hung out and partied with these guys and we didn't know him that well, so George came out for three weeks, two and a half weeks, and got in the trucks and learned the industry and heard from the technicians about their gripes, about dispatch is always sending me all over the damn Chicagoland, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and then really got to understand how our industry works. Before they started going into the coding and then Tobias, over there he does the programming. So then Toby came out and he got to have the same experience and then through that we became really good friends. So they stay at our house, we hang out I call my kids, I got to get them ice cream every once in a while and so the relationship really formed through that.
Thaddeus Tondu:Yeah, pass code on the beer fridge though.
Jim Sloan:Yeah. I told him, I said, hey, if you're going to stay hey, the house beer is bush light. You better get to know it and so yeah, it was really cool and what was cool is before they even went into like really coding, they understood hey man, this is the pains of the dispatchers, the field guys, management, ownership, how can we code and create something that's going to not only drive revenue, right? Cause we're going to have to pay for it it's going to take care of our customers. Cause that's a big one and take care of our employees. Like how can we make our employees experience better?
Thaddeus Tondu:I wrote down tech buy in, right? Like technicians, right? And you think a lot of times look at the average age and the demographic of the average service technician right now what's trending down as people are starting to age out, but they still are older individuals and you're now trying to get them to buy into technology and buy into doing this and buy into doing that and So the smarts to say hey, why don't we actually go out and figure out what the pain ports are? How can we make this something for these individuals to make it better for them? And this is the people product price I was talking about, right? And people have two, two offshoots one is your individuals, your team, the other one is your customers and your team is actually number one, your customers, number two and when you do your team, number one, guess what happens to your customer? They get treated the right way. that's a key part. So I'm curious in terms of all of that research. What was the biggest pain point or maybe two top pain points that you're like, shit, we're going to solve this thing.
George Eliadis:Yeah, I would think the biggest pain point that, we were able to create value in is just how people think about driving time when it comes to dispatch, because, everywhere we had heard up until, we started getting and visiting shops was dispatch for profit is, right tech, right calls the main principle and we dug a bit deeper and it's certainly correct. You want to match good opportunities to technicians that are going to perform at them and maximize the company's revenue. But at the same time, if you send a top performer driving all over the map, now there's an opportunity cost you're taking him off of another call he can't do and you're taking Like that's a big pain point because it's leaving a lot of money on the table. Now you have top techs running less calls than they should because their routes are taking them all over the service area we saw that with you guys and a lot of other companies and getting, people that are actually doing the dispatching to understand that, hey, when you have a bunch of 10 plus calls and you have a lot of performers that can run those calls you've got to pay attention to how you're going to route those. Because if you've got your top guy, just driving all over the place, it's costing you, more money than people realize.
Thaddeus Tondu:Efficiency, right? And you look at what is the average business is 36 to 38 percent efficient from a technician standpoint now, if you can make more efficiency in there.
Jim Sloan:Whoa and we saw that Monday. So it got like cold here and we had more calls than we know what to do with and this has never happened as far as I was like in operations. It sure probably didn't happen when my dad was running the company. Is we had I think we ran a record, like 78 demand calls that day, which was our record. But what was most important is we look, my dispatch manager came in, who's been working hand in hand with these guys. He goes, I'm not trying, his name's Ryan, by the way. If you're ever having a bad day, this is the dude you want to talk to. Like he is absolutely amazing. He comes, he goes Jim, I go, what's up, man? He goes, I don't want to be greedy or anything, but I think we can move some demand calls up that are scheduled for tomorrow to today. I said, that sounds like a great idea. What are we going to move up? So we looked at the board and we said, Holy crap.
Thaddeus Tondu:No, you can say shit.
Jim Sloan:Yeah. Yeah. You said, I don't want Brian to, he's going to be like, what the hell? You're cussing too much, but we looked at the board and we said, okay, what calls do we want to move up? Cause we had I don't know, another 75 demand calls for the next day. And so we looked at it and we said let's take care of our membership customers because unfortunately we couldn't get them in by the time they called in and so we looked at it and we moved up five, 10 plus man calls. Cause those are very important calls to us and then I guess for people that don't know what 10 plus meaning is it's out of warranty. So you have a great opportunity to flip it and sell it. the age is probably greater than 10 years. So yeah, it's greater than 10 years. We get a chance to flip it, sell it, create revenue. So not only do we pull up five of those calls, we pulled up five of our membership customers. I think three of them were demand and two were warranty callbacks. So we were able to run those calls. it's the message I sent you our technicians were home by seven o'clock, so they were super fucking happy, right? It's cold. It's negative 20 and I'm home at seven o'clock and our customers got taken care of, but also they flipped them and sold it for 30 grand. So it was like, had we not got the efficiency of the drive time, I think that day, our average drive time was like 18 minutes for our technicians. Then we want to have 20 days and we wouldn't have had a chance to move those calls up and generate that type of revenue and I'm sure there's conversion rates and average tickets that my kiddos can jump into. But for me, it was like, wow, we took care of our membership customers and we produced 30 grand. I walked in, my sales manager goes, thank God we moved those calls up. We sold an extra 28, 500 and it worked out really well.
Thaddeus Tondu:Just paid for ProBook.
Jim Sloan:Yeah. For a portion of the year. Yeah, a portion.
Thaddeus Tondu:Yeah, but like really that's like you think about when somebody calls in and it's minus 20 outside, they're in pain, right? They've got a problem. Their heat's not working. They're scared. Guys, why am I going to get heat tonight? We're going to freeze to death. Like all these sorts of things to be able to do more calls on the board because you were more efficient. Think about that. That's crazy.
George Eliadis:Yeah, those customers were going elsewhere if they weren't, right? That's true.
Thaddeus Tondu:A great point, right? That's the other thing is okay it's minus 20 outside regardless of how good of a relationship you have. If their shit ain't working
Jim Sloan:and what about those 10 customers? Imagine thinking like, holy shit. Am I going to have? and we call them up and say, hey, got great news. We'll be there in an hour or whatever, however much the time was. It's imagine that feeling like, oh man, I am going to get heat.
Thaddeus Tondu:But that's it's such an important piece, too. I think a lot of people miss that part, right? Is that OK? If I can't get there. But I can't service that in neutral. If I can't be there today, they're calling someone else, right? 100%. Now, if they're limping through and they're still able to have heat and okay, they might wait a day or two, right? We're in Canada. Like when you guys were minus 20 Fahrenheit and Celsius recall, it was a minus 40 outside without the windshield and so it's the exact same philosophy and the exact same thing. I don't care my relationship that I have with people that are in my city. If my furnace isn't working, I'm calling somebody until they can be there.
Jim Sloan:Yeah. I think the cancellation, it flooded the whole Chicagoland, but I think our cancellation rate, just being honest I think too many people jump on podcasts and they're just like, no offense to people that jump on podcasts, but they tell you a lot of bullshit that, we all have issues. It was like a 34 percent cancellation, right? Yep. So you got to think the next day, 34 percent of those calls would have canceled.
Evan Hoffman:But in reality, they want to get taken care of.
Thaddeus Tondu:You put up what, 78 plus the extra 10 or is it 78 in total?
Jim Sloan:Cause the callbacks, we don't look at those as like opportunity calls. So it would have been 71, probably if I'm doing the math right. I got to ask my nerds, is that the right number?
George Eliadis:Yeah, it was. 78 demand calls I've ran on Monday and their previous record was six.
Jim Sloan:Oh, we would have been at seven, right?
Thaddeus Tondu:So seven, so you had 68 and then you added the extra 10 to get 78, but even still 70 demand calls to run that on one day.
George Eliadis:And everybody home by seven and the average ticket to actually go up. People might think, oh, what's the catch. You're getting more calls, but are you losing on right tech, right call we actually tend to do it better just because we're looking really granularly at how well does each tech sell at each type of call and use that to really get really precise when we value driving time against, expected tech sales.
Thaddeus Tondu:That makes sense.
Jim Sloan:Yeah, man and I think about to like, think about the customer's experience of I got a pissed off technician because they're driving 45 minutes to an hour in between each call. But man, they hop in their van. They're at their next call within 20 minutes. Think about that experience. How happy are they? Instead, they're like, fuck, it's snowing. I'm in this cold weather and they're sending me an hour and 10 minutes away from my current job and they're going to show up and treat the customer a lot better.
Thaddeus Tondu:Yep. They're happy, right? When they're happy, guess what?
Jim Sloan:And they know it, too. Aaron runs our service he's part of the peanut gallery in the corner. He even said, before we even announced it to the team, because we were still doing beta stuff, is one of the service techs asked him, are you guys dispatching differently? Because we don't look at say you have a call in a town called Naperville and we say, Hey, let's give these two calls in Naperville to this tech cause Hey, he's going to be this call and all that crap. You can still drive 40 minutes to get to that like we're in the Scotland, it can literally be a 40 minute drive where our dispatchers are not going to look at that and say, they just say, hey, it's Naperville. It'll be all right. Where they're lining it up, where, instead of driving to the north side, to the south side, to the north side, it's let's hit these calls in between.
Thaddeus Tondu:it's all AA driving, that's the best part. I'm assuming most of it is at this point.
George Eliadis:Yeah, the AI is helpful in a bunch of contexts, like not to get too technical, but we look at AI to figure out what a tech's performance is going to be at a given job, as well as how long that tech's going to take on that given job so we can plan their day a bit better and we're just, bolstering the dispatch front more and more on, seeing where we can do to make it more valuable driving and more catch more of the cases that, typically would have to have human intervention involved.
Evan Hoffman:Do you rerun the algorithm depending on every single call? Do you keep
George Eliadis:updating it? Yeah. So it updates fully in real time whenever something in the board changes we recalculate on. We're also like constantly doing thousands of simulations for how the day will potentially evolve and basically forecasting what calls are going to arrive that don't even exist yet based on weather and other patterns. So extremely dynamic.
Evan Hoffman:And that's something that's impossible to do as a human.
George Eliadis:Yeah, impossible.
Evan Hoffman:Like even to have a dedicated person on your staff to be able to sit there and analyze every single call. What was their average ticket? What problems came up? How did they handle it? All of like it's impossible.
Jim Sloan:Yeah. And it's funny we were doing like a two week, I don't know if you want to call it rotating. Like we would look at the bullpen, we'd look at a trail in two weeks and we'd update the bullpen for the week and that's just what we would ride with cause we can't, they're not going to constantly do that and there's favoritism people build friendships and they want their body or their good body to get their good call. So it takes that out of it too, but we weren't looking at it every day. So this is doing it in real time constantly and I think a lot of it too, is not everything's about dollars and cents. Like our industry has gotten fucking weird since 2018 with certain situations in the industry. Not everything's about dollars and cents. So it's like, how can I make my dispatcher's job easier? So they're excited to come to work, but also. The customer side of it is like they're, they can now focus more on how to treat the customer. Then they have to worry about, Oh man, I hope I send the right tech to the right call at the right time. No, they don't need to worry about that. They can update the costumers more. They can engage more with the costumers and make that side of the business better.
Thaddeus Tondu:It's, it takes the emotion out of it that's the biggest thing and cause you mentioned that friend thing and the buddy and oh, this person might be good. Now you're taking that completely out of the equation. But here's the underlying part of it, too, is if you've reduced the drive time from an hour to 20 minutes, that's 40 minutes more that they could spend with the customer. Should they need to spend with the customer or maybe it's 20 minutes more and then that compounds throughout the day and that's where you get that extra call that you can run in the day. But when you take that extra time for the customer.
Jim Sloan:It's gonna pay off. It's gonna pay off.
Evan Hoffman:You take all that pressure off from the tech, right?
Thaddeus Tondu:Yep and then your Google reviews take a boost because they get more, you get the time to spend thoroughly in the house. It's not just rush. Wham, bam. Thank you, ma'am. You're at the door.
Jim Sloan:I would agree with that a hundred percent is a lot of people now we're going to dive into a little bit of a different subject, but we'll do it. Fuck it. Who cares is like a lot of people think that I'm going to line like 12 calls up to my tech and just fucking wham, bam. Thank you, ma'am and I'm going to change a minor part, not create a customer service and the truth is we limit our technicians. They run last Monday, seven calls. Didn't like it, didn't love it, but we had so many calls. But on normal, it's four to five calls. Slow down, spend time with the customer, build the value. People are like, oh my god, they won't buy from me. So I gotta be as cheap as hell. And it's how long were you on the sales call for? 25 minutes? I'm like, yeah, I'm not spending fucking 12 grand with you if you spend 25 minutes with me. You're out of your mind. Slow down, take care of the customer, and it pays off. We like smash Google reviews for the size of our company. I think we have 7500 or something is like, dude, just slow down, build the value and they'll spend the money with you. If they trust you, they'll spend the money with him.
Thaddeus Tondu:And it's about building the script, that whole Google review thing. Oh, that's great. I actually didn't even look at how many Google reviews you guys had.
Jim Sloan:So I think it's 7500 if somebody fact checks it, it's close.
Thaddeus Tondu:I look, if you're up in the thousands he's oh, oh, 6, 000, 6, 000, 6, 000 at one location, 6, 000 and change. In case those people that are listening, we'd have some peanut gallery over, they've actually been pretty quiet. I'm surprised. I want to challenge them on the 6, 000. You're going to have fun with it, right? You're not counting our other two locations, dickhead. Ah, it's odd. Shots fired. Shots fired. Yeah. So I call him.
Jim Sloan:There is a guy here. His name's Aaron Van Tilburg. He's our service manager. We have a great relationship. I call him my dad. So we talk a lot of crap to each other, but amazing guy. For him to stick around all day, just to hang out, these are two cool ass dudes.
Evan Hoffman:Absolutely. I'm curious how you have leveraged this information to also bring further coaching and training back to your team. You've got one tech that's amazing at running this type of call. Converting that into a flip or providing more value, are you then bringing other technicians that are a little weaker on those calls with them to go field train?
Jim Sloan:So that's a huge debate that I have with George and Tobias because everything comes with a price and so like we'll get into it. They're like, Jim, it doesn't make sense. You need to send this person on this call when it's slow, like we're not anybody that's yeah, we just smashed it and we have so many calls. It's sometimes we don't and that's okay. Like we have shoulder seasons and it's you need to send them home. I'm like, you don't understand. I need them in June. We debated and they're like, you need to send them on a ride along to get better. So really, I think where we're leveraging a little bit more right now is yeah being transparent. So where we get a lot of complaints at the company level is like the technicians just don't understand the lineup. They don't have this ability to line up. They don't understand what calls they're getting. So now with the dash, they have a heat map. I don't know what, like the correct term for it is like it's on TVs and they can see it and they can understand where they're at and why they're getting the calls in which they're getting. Whereas before they didn't really have access to see that and so it's very like, Hey, yes, you want to call that Mike Earnhardt's game. Let's get you to micro and hearts level right now you're producing this because the way the heat map works is it shows you that and they can explain it better, but it's like dollar values. It's Hey, this is where you're at on the heat map. And we need to do some skill practicing. We need to do some training. We need to get you in the truck. We got to have some more ride alongs with Aaron to try to get you up to where Mike's at so then you can get the calls that Mike's getting. And so just transparency, I think, is one of the long ways.
Thaddeus Tondu:Elaborate on that point, right? I'm like, I'm waiting he queued you up nicely for that one. I did. I did. This is like my first podcast and you're nailing it, buddy. Yeah. Hey, do you want to become a co host? You can replace this schlep over here. Yeah.
Jim Sloan:Only if I get to come to Canada. I do want to g not allowed. No, I got family.
George Eliadis:Jim hit the nail It's our dashboard that shows tech performance by job type and tag combination. So we could look at an HVAC demand call with a 10 plus tag on it to see that HVAC repairs where the system is more than 10 years old. How much does each tech make on expected profit? And we can look at an under five demand call on a Six year old maintenance or a maintenance call. It's unknown age. However, you tag it and slice it when it serves sighting We can get dollar values and that makes the coaching really clear because you can look at a tech and look at how he performs in ten pluses and you know if he's not at the top if he's not that Mike Earnhardt You know exactly where to coach them on the, making the flip. You can also look at an under five maintenance and see, all right, let's teach you about selling, IAQ and, all these ancillary things that, the under five main, the under five units not going to be replaced, but you can sell them these add ons and it makes it really clear to just look at, this guy's 10th in this category. Let's coach him on selling I A Q stuff and the flip side is because dispatchers don't have to play Tetris all day anymore. They have Monday and they had a calm day and they focus on the customers. They can also focus on the text and, this one's up to management. But call by call management is something that the dispatchers can do to now coach their text because they know the trade so well on Making the most out of every call. And I think call by call management on its own is going to, probably help out lifting tickets as well. So it lets you, it shows you exactly where to coach the texts for each type of call and then dispatchers are, better equipped to coach their texts through the day.
Thaddeus Tondu:I'm curious cause you, I'm like proper tagging and service site. Yeah. And that was something that I picked up on. I think a lot of companies missed the mark on that. Was there tagging a show? Let's scale this. How good or bad was their tagging?
Jim Sloan:I remember you're sleeping in my guest room.
George Eliadis:So their tagging is actually one of our better use cases because they followed next star standards with. making their bucket sizes big enough, so they tag their HVAC calls under 5, 6 to 9 years old, unknown age, and 10 and they have different tags for equipment type and plumbing and our model performs really well. The correlation coefficients are all real nice. Other companies do struggle with that and it's a big sticking point and then we hear, Oh, it sounds great, but our call center is probably not going to, tag it well. So we've got something in the works. That's going to actually automatically tag jobs based on, system age and what the customer says, and it would be fully tweakable to a company's parameters, but we want to remove as a barrier, because when you have good tagging, we have good data and we can make good decisions. When you're tagging is a little more suspect, it's harder to perform well.
Evan Hoffman:So you just use the full transcript from the phone call and based on that, it would auto tag.
George Eliadis:Exactly. Yeah that's the goal.
Thaddeus Tondu:Nice. But then again, that removes the human area element out of it of tagging it correctly or incorrectly.
Jim Sloan:Yeah and I think a lot of people like try to lean on the CSRs to do it. You heard him just say that is from my experience, that doesn't work. Their job is to book the call. Like they just need to get the customer's information, get them on the board, make sure the customer has a good experience and so what we found is that you really got to have the. To have it as accurate as we can get it, and it's pretty damn accurate at our shop, is that there's a dispatch DB reform, and so before they can get the next call, we go, they, our service technicians put the information in to confirm that the information is correct, and the dispatchers will update whatever was wrong out of the call center, and then the data moving forward is accurate and so a lot of people just lean on the CSRs, man. At the end of the day, book the damn demand call. Book the call and we'll figure it out on the back end. We need that demand call.
Thaddeus Tondu:Rewind one minute and re listen to what he just said. They, their techs fill out a form at the end of the call to make sure that all the information is correct. It goes to the CSR, CSR updates it to make sure all the information is correct. Now there's two data sets, plus you add in the third one of what you guys are doing. There's three points of. of data contact, be able to make sure and sure you're putting the right data in equals data out, right? It's like an ATM and you're going to get bad data. Oh, yeah.
Jim Sloan:And so what's interesting and I talked to companies and it's not wrong or right, man. It's just that how do you pull any reporting to do a budget for next year? If you don't know your call mix, if you don't know what percentage of your calls are going to be 10 plus or however, you want to look at that, then I don't know how you do a budget. Like we know our historical data on how many of our demand calls it'll come in that are going to be out of warranty. We're in the HVAC business not hurt any feelings or anything, but like we're in the replacement business. If you're an HVAC, you need to replace equipment. So if you're building a budget or you're looking at what next month's going to be, you need to know what your call split is for those chances that they're out of warranty. If you don't then you're like driving a car with no GPS. Like I'm trying, I'm not from the city. I'm like from a town of 1600 people. It was like, I don't know how the fuck to get to Chicago, but my GPS does. And so if you're not paying attention to call mixes and tagging things correctly and making sure that your ATM and data out as a. You're really driving a car with no destination. I don't know how you're going to get there. You're just going to hope the phone rings and man call comes in and maybe they sell a piece of equipment and maybe they don't.
Evan Hoffman:Unfortunately, that's how most people run their business.
Jim Sloan:I know. So I'm hoping they're listening. It's very, it's not hard, man. You just ask your techs, hey, read the data plate. Can you make, give us the age? It's all in the serial number make sure that. You ask just very nicely, can you please do this and then make sure that the dispatchers are updating the system before they give them another call. If you have them do the debrief and you're just like, Hey, it's cool. Thank you for doing it. And keep giving them calls. They're not going to do it. So you make sure that the dispatcher, the CSR in this world looks at that debrief form and they update your tags and then your data is accurate. Then, might take six to 12 months, but you'll get there.
Thaddeus Tondu:Here's the other part though, is you could take a look at, and I don't know if you guys Thought of what this or building it out or had a vision for it. I've taken a picture of the data plate and AI and that into
George Eliadis:the system. Yeah. We've been told that's a problem before, and I think somebody's been entering that space. So it's something we've thought about and entertained, but it's not really in the cards right now, just because
Jim Sloan:that's the answer I get. I've asked him for it. It's not in the cards. Jim, you want us to do too much and we need to focus on this, but
Thaddeus Tondu:Walk through that because you guys get thrown so many ideas your way in so many parameters, so many things you want to build on. How do you focus on what's right and what you should vote or say what's right? How do you filter out what you want to focus on to be able to know to stay in your lane?
George Eliadis:That's a really good question. And it really just boils down to spending a lot of time with our customers because it's. Like we get asked for a lot of stuff all the time and we're definitely building a lot more stuff we're not a one trick pony But at the same time we have to figure out what's actually inflicting the largest pain So that's why we go to their offices and we watch The people do the processes that they want automated and see you know Is this just gonna save a couple of minutes in admin time or is this actually gonna move the needle for the business's metric? Something like dispatches aside from freeing up the dispatchers to be more customer centric, operational value of better dispatching and scheduling decisions is huge. So just keeping close with our customers and seeing what's like the most painful stuff that's like top of mind now is really just bolstering dispatch more like when people have to reschedule customers because they're, too busy we have a pain for showing which customers to reschedule based on I think it's great. All right Yeah, what about telling customers who to outbound? When the board isn't so full, that's something that we get here a lot. So making like an automated, outbound suggestion based on what type of call, what kind of equipment they have and where it's located. Another thing we're going to be doing is like a customer facing scheduling pieces. We didn't even get into this, but you also automate scheduling and show CSR.
Jim Sloan:We haven't even talked call center yet. Yeah, that's fair.
George Eliadis:Because like scheduling is the first step of good dispatching. If your calls are spread far apart or you have too much of one type of call, you're gonna either have to drive all over the map, or you're gonna have to assign calls to techs that shouldn't be running them, or you're gonna have to reschedule calls, all of which are bad. So we show CSRs. When to book calls based on the right text being available. So if you have a 10 plus maintenance, you might have a spot open in your maintenance business unit, but that doesn't mean you should book that call because now you're gonna have to send somebody that might necessarily not be a good fit for that call and so that's what our CSR see, profitable capacity. But why don't we make that a customer facing widget? So when the customer logs onto a, T. R. Miller's website, they see, recommendations on when to book the call based on what's best for T. R. Miller?
Jim Sloan:Before we segway to chase. We were talking about chasing shiny things. Now we're getting into call center, which I do want to talk. Call center told me one of the shiny things is an install board that's automated out of ServiceTitan, and he won't fucking do it for me. We have to do it on Excel, and it drives me crazy like you have to manually do it, and it's paying the bottom. I do. Just please, can you automate? Install process and he's no, it's not that much value. I'm like, but it's value to me. a good job also of listening to what Jim's suggestions are and just being like, yeah, no, that ain't gonna happen and so the call center pieces is we can transition to that cause I think there is a lot of value in the call center and so I'm going to say it cause there's probably a lot of people that listen to your podcast that don't outbound and so when we joined Nexstar, Tom Marriott was like the coach and he's Jim, you guys got to get to outbounding but I was a trades guy and I'm like, we don't want to bug our customers. Why would we want to do that? And then we didn't have any calls and I was like damn Tom might have been onto something here we got to start outbounding. So if you're not outbounding your customers, you shouldn't be. Absolutely. It really should be and so we again back to having Excel spreadsheets to try to set mins and maxes on what type of call types and how many texts you're going to have. It's very much a pain in the ass. So when I got with these guys, I go, I think there's a huge area of opportunity in the call center because nobody's. Doing bolt ons in the call center. And so they came into the call center and they took a look. And so I can't talk much on it because I'm, Like I barely know how to use Microsoft Word. So I don't know how half this shit works. Do you type like this? But, yeah. I'm like my dad. I use one finger.
Thaddeus Tondu:Check it back in.
Jim Sloan:Yeah and so they sat in there and they looked at how we did it and they're like, oh yeah, there's a huge area here. And one thing that was neat is a couple of weeks ago, he goes, Jim, is our coding right? And I go, I don't know. I don't even know how to code anything. And he goes it's telling us to prebook less on Mondays. And I'm like, yeah, because we get all the overflow from the weekend, people like we're open seven days a week, all that stuff, but they still don't call like I probably don't call on Sundays because I like to hang out with my fiance and watch football and I'm not trying to get anything done on Sunday. So we do get a huge amount of people that call in on Monday and their programming realized that and started allowing us to pre book less on Monday. So if you want to talk more about the call center, I want to talk about the Shiny thing. And also, they're doing cool shit in the call center, but I think it's like AI. AI is like a really catchy word right now. It's like a buzzword, right? Yep. And so is Dispatch for Profit, right? So everybody wants to talk about that, but there is a lot of bolt ons and things that they're doing in the call center. That's really cool. That honestly doesn't get enough attention. And the head programmer even said I need to put more attention to the call center. So if you want to talk about the call center stuff, it's cool. Shit.
Evan Hoffman:I'll tell you what, before we get into the call center, we've got one of our favorite parts of the show.
Jim Sloan:Oh, let's do it.
Evan Hoffman:It's called the random question generator.
Thaddeus Tondu:Oh, we are going to bust into that. Sweet.
Evan Hoffman:That has nothing to do with anything that we've been talking about whatsoever.
Jim Sloan:Let's do it.
Evan Hoffman:You get your choice, question one, two or three, George, you can go first. You don't know what it is beforehand. So what's your choice? One, two or three.
George Eliadis:Number two.
Evan Hoffman:All right. What are you interested in that most people have never heard of?
George Eliadis:Interruption.
Jim Sloan:Oh, this is actually fucking interesting. This dude once told me that he used to go to the bank when he was a kid and get 10, 000 pennies to find pennies that are worth a dollar because the ROI on it. Like he's into it. Interesting shit. Yeah, I
Evan Hoffman:said that's nickels, dude, right? When it was made a solid nickel, it was actually worth seven cents instead of five. There you go. Yeah, I'm gonna go buy some nickels now. You know what? I got a lot of free time. I'm gonna go buy some fucking nickels.
George Eliadis:Yeah, I don't do coins much anymore. My big hobby, coins and currency growing up and obviously everybody's heard of coins, but coin roll hunting was, for me, it was so much fun. I would go buy like the 25 box of pennies and look. It's those wheatback scents that had the two ears in the back and back when I was in like sixth grade, that was it. That was so cool. And then I moved to dimes and quarters and half dollars quarters suck. There's no silver quarters in circulation left, but half dollars you could find occasionally and then I do vinyl records too. That's one of my big hobbies. I collect vinyl. Maybe kids these days haven't heard of it, but I'm sure, there. going out of style a few years ago, so I'd say,
Jim Sloan:It was like very, you said vinyls, and like obviously we know what vinyls are, how do you make money though? Because I think the way you make money, most people don't know. That's how close literally we hang out at my house and just talk, it's like How are you making money on the vinyls? Cause I don't think most people know about that. Yeah.
George Eliadis:And I got on with Garth Brooks boxed over the summer, but yeah, what I do is I figured out, I run a Facebook group for records, got 4, 000 members and my customers, they're very loyal and they're, I've been working with them for three years, so I go to record shows in person and I buy a lot of like high end records in bulk. And then sell them in my group because they're 90s grunge. I don't know if you guys know it's impossible to find on vinyl cause the CDs were in, right? So no one is making Alice in Chains on vinyl and, 1995. So when you take that Alice in Chains unplugged. Yeah, that no one bought in 1996 and that's worth four or five hundred bucks and you get a group of just like super fans that are into grunge and I find it at a record show in New Jersey for two hundred bucks, it's easy to sell and sustain a good business with.
Jim Sloan:Sick so when he first came out, rental cars are expensive. So he always hooped these around in a TR vehicle. He goes, Hey man, I think I'm going to Iowa. I go, first off, who the fuck wants to go to Iowa second for what? And he goes there's, I found this guy on Facebook marketplace and he's got this I don't remember what the record was.
George Eliadis:Smashing pumpkins.
Jim Sloan:You're going to drive all the way to Iowa to get a smashing pumpkins record. He's yeah and I go, okay, how do you make money? And it's on the raffles. The raffles is really how you do it.
George Eliadis:Yeah, we call them waffles but, yeah, that works too.
Evan Hoffman:That's awesome. All right, Jim, one or three? Question one or question three?
Jim Sloan:Go with Dale Earnhardt, number three.
Evan Hoffman:All right. Go to karaoke song?
Jim Sloan:Oh, man, dude. We went on a cruise. Aaron and I karaoke. Man, I'm terrified. I'm tone deaf. But our roommate's African American guy and we love to get Hamed and just try to karaoke rap and it is absolutely terrible and my poor fiance has to put up with it. And we like, are so tone deaf and off the beat, but we love to karaoke rap, so probably Nelly's batters up. It's taking it back to when we were kids, but fucking love that song, man. It's a great fucking it Dane, it's like my hype song. I love it. Even the girls in the office, they know. Got to see him last year at the RhinoX event, that was fucking, from me to Aaron away, I'm like, Oh my god, he is so handsome, and I'm not even gay. I'm getting married, I'm like, how does he look the same way he did in the 90s, holy shit! So yeah, I would say I like to karaoke rap, man, it's probably Nelly, and I like DMX was big when we were kids, and I'm terrible, like absolutely terrible, but yeah, that's it.
Evan Hoffman:Love it. Nice. DMX is fantastic.
Thaddeus Tondu:I totally forgot what our next segway was gonna be, I got lost in the pennies. Hold on!
Jim Sloan:Why don't you guys pick a random question? We're the hosts, we don't have to do it. Yeah, but that would be fun. What would you karaoke to?
Evan Hoffman:Oh, easy Baby. Got back. Oh, Yes. Perfect. dude. For sure. 36
Jim Sloan:Junior High dance man. Junior high dance. That's cool.
Thaddeus Tondu:I once got bood off stage for singing Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire. Really? And I was so drunk. It was three in the morning, it was like last song of the night and I somehow unplugged the mic as I was singing, I could pick it up, like the thing back in, everyone just starts booing. I'm just like, fuck it. I dropped the mic and I walked off the stage.
Evan Hoffman:You sing as good as you look, right? Yeah.
Jim Sloan:Yeah. We were doing some karaoke and on the cruise we went on and it was pretty embarrassing, but we had a blast. Like the room was full. I didn't personally do it, but the guys we were with, man, there was some booing. Yeah, it was great though. You guys ever get a chance to do that? You ever go on a cruise? I've been on a cruise. It was just a short one. Dude, go hit the karaoke, man. You get a whole mix of people and it's a fucking blast.
Thaddeus Tondu:This boat's a rockin don't come a knockin
George Eliadis:Nah. Call settings. Call settings. Yeah, CSRs have so much, so many things to deal with that logistics and profitable scheduling shouldn't be one of them and it's just really hard to do. No,
Thaddeus Tondu:I don't know. It's on APA. It's hard pass.
George Eliadis:It's really hard, especially in your scheduling maintenance to think about what's the best date. For the company, demand calls you try to squeeze them right away You usually save her next day unless it's a hundred degrees for three days in the summer but when you we're dealing with routine maintenance the choice of what day you schedule that call on has a drastic impact on how much driving time is gonna come around because if we take this thing right here and your calls are like You've got a call here a call here a call here in one day getting a tech to drive to all of those is going to be a lot of driving, no matter how good your dispatcher pro book is. So preemptively distributing those well is really huge. And humans just we can't even think about it of how to do that. So huge opportunity there to just help CSRs focus more on the customers and drive more profit at the same time.
Jim Sloan:So it's pretty cool. So like it bolts on a service. I don't know how that works. as the customer calls in, it's got a drop down and it selects the days for us. Whereas before they'd have to hold on. And then we're gonna open this sheet and see what our availability is and the managers have to sit set what the call mix is yeah, it's pretty cool. So they don't have to think about It's literally it drops down it tells them what to like what days are available and it's really cool So they don't have to manage spreadsheets and hope to god the csr remembered To put in the spreadsheet that I call, they booked the call. So what would happen on the operation side? And Aaron can contest this is like they'd overbook us and we'd be fucking pissed because it's like, Oh, great. Now my dispatch team has to reschedule 10 to 15 calls or whatever the case might be, where this is really doing a good job of making sure that doesn't happen. And so there's also the customer side of it, right? It's like nobody wants to get that call. Hey, your inspections getting rescheduled because we screwed up and overbooked and whatever the case might be. And I think they're like. Gun, not a computer guy. I think they're working on mixing in the weather and like our average demand calls and all that tech to that pre booking as well. So yeah, it's pretty cool stuff.
George Eliadis:Yeah. When you have a lot of weather coming in and we expect a lot of demand calls, you don't want to fill up on maintenance because you're not going to run them when that day comes and then you got to reschedule people and it's just, there's so much to do with. Being intelligent about when you book calls, right?
Thaddeus Tondu:So does the, did your guys's program look at the weather or is that something that you've manually told your team to do or he's
Jim Sloan:I don't know how to use Microsoft so.
George Eliadis:We take care of that. We use weather as one of the features to predict how much demand is going to arrive and use that to assess how much maintenance to book, and how far out are you booking that? So our look back, our look forward period for maintenance is up to 60 days, but we don't typically book that far out unless you're completely slammed. So if we're expecting a lot of demand to come in, you might see us booking an under five maintenance call and non opportunity one to two weeks out potentially further. But their recommendations. So the CSR sees the ranked options of when to book and they could run through those to the customer. But let's say the customer has specific requests and they're only available within a certain time frame. You could either use our filter or just, book it manually worst case.
Evan Hoffman:So using Naperville as an example, if you've got a tech that's running. Two calls out there, but that's all they got your software can then recommend, Hey, call these customers here. Cause we've got a list of 30 or 40, put them in this order so that we can get that third or fourth call out there.
George Eliadis:So that's not there yet. That's what I was alluding to without bounding. Basically, like when you need calls, looking at the board and figure looking at your customer lists and deciding. Who to outbound and making those recommendations. But right now it's just, the calls you already have and making the most out of that.
Evan Hoffman:Got it. So that's a tease of what's to come.
Thaddeus Tondu:Yeah. But it's, it is smart looking at the future weather to forecast and predict what you're booking out. I don't think a lot of individuals even think about that at all, really. Cause they're like, Oh, I'll just take whatever comes in. Yeah and then all of a sudden you get a cold spell. Hot as fuck.
Jim Sloan:Yeah. And I think whether it's like a, it's an interesting word. Because like you can become a victim oh, it's not hot. It's not cold, whatever. So the weather's an interesting word. Cause you can, your success or failure can be based on the weather. It's really easy to blame that. But at our size, it's something you got to consider. Yep. Like it's something you have to look at and say, Hey, you know what? The weather's not going to fucking hit. It's not going to be cold until January. Whatever that day was is like, we need to outbound and run more inspection calls. We know that we're not going to get that weather and that's what they're going to help with. And then rescheduling sucks, dude. It really does and I hate doing it. It happens. It's I want to get to a place where, when the weather isn't going to enhance. Cool. Then we're going to book more inspections. They convert at a different level, but, and then when it is going to enhance, I don't have to call 20 people and say, sorry, you're just not important to me today, but tomorrow I got you like three weeks from now, I'll get to you. It'll be all good. And so trying to use. AI or however they're going to do, however they do what they do use that to help make a better experience and better calls from the management side is we want to get smarter, right? We're humans. We need to learn how to use computers to get smarter.
Thaddeus Tondu:Here's what I like about what you just said is they're, they do AI or however they're going to be able to do it. I don't really know. A lot of business owners get lost in this analysis paralysis. They're like, I know there's so much tech, there's so much AI. I don't know where we're getting off. No, it's surrounding yourself with the individuals that, okay, here's what I want. Can we make it happen and letting other individuals do the work?
Jim Sloan:And that's where you get out of that. Now, I think Tommy boy said it and I'm going to butcher the quote, but it was something about I don't need to know. I don't have to stick my head up the cow's ass to know how it was made. I just need to know how that steak tastes. It's I don't need to know exactly how it works. I have to just trust that these dudes are super smart and they're going to figure it out for me. And when they don't, I'm gonna call them up and be like, yo, this ain't working. You guys got to program something different, right?
Evan Hoffman:Yeah, I could get a good look at a T bone by sticking my head up a bull's ass, but I'd rather take the butcher's word for it. Yeah, there we go. No, and the other part of what you said as well is do we want to become a weather dependent business or weather assisted business? And taking charge of your business, taking charge of your call board, making sure that you're running the calls that are going to drive your business forward, regardless of what's
George Eliadis:happening with the weather. Yep. It's being proactive as opposed to reactive. Exactly.
Thaddeus Tondu:Look, gents, a phenomenal conversation. Thank you both for taking the time out of the HR and for you to drive in the hour and you to fly in or come in from wherever you're at these days, because I think you bounce around a lot. Butchering that one. Hey, but appreciate you both, for taking some time. How can somebody get in touch with both of you guys? Should they want to obviously you guys websites for starters, but
Jim Sloan:No, Brian and I have always been and we've always had people that have helped us. I'm not bullshitting. Like, when we were small, we went to people and they opened their shop and they let us see our shops open all the time. I'm not going to give you my cell phone number. Brian made a mistake doing that on a podcast before, and every Giacomo sales guy got ahold of him and not a contractor is email me. It's super simple jim@trmiller now and like literally phone calls, zoom. Whatever we can do to give back to the industry. I think oftentimes there's people taking away from the industry and not enough people giving back to it. So we host open houses. We have onsites. We just had next star yesterday. Do like an AHR open house. Our shop's always open. So shoot me an email. If you want to jump on a zoom, a phone call, flying to Chicago, do an onsite. It doesn't matter to us. It's it'll always be open.
Thaddeus Tondu:Perfect. Thanks for that and how about yourself.
George Eliadis:George? Yeah, I'll give out my phone number
Thaddeus Tondu:3am phone calls and pictures, please.
Jim Sloan:For a good time, call George. A lot of sales people. I put that on the stall last night.
Thaddeus Tondu:He's fuck, why did I ask for that call, Gabe Propp?
George Eliadis:Hopefully I don't get too hammered, My phone number is 845 542 5751. You could email me as well, georgeatprobookdispatch.com. or you can just go to our website, probookdispatch.com. Click book demo. We'll get time to, talk or show you pro book and. If we can fit you in our travel calendar, we'll come out to your shop. I love visiting people's shops, like even, customers, prospective customers. If we're, able to get out there, I'd love to look at your operation and consult and, talk about how Probook could potentially fit in your workflow.
Evan Hoffman:Love it.
Thaddeus Tondu:Love it
Jim Sloan:Hold on, boys. I want to thank you for busting my podcast, Cherry. I was always nervous to get on and I met you guys. I think we were at. We're in Phoenix. Yeah, Phoenix
Thaddeus Tondu:You guys were chatting with Chiirp and so were we.
Jim Sloan:Yeah, and so I appreciate it, man. When you guys were like, hey, we can have some beers and we can swear, I'm like, hell yeah, let's do it. guys.
Thaddeus Tondu:That's what he even said last night. He's oh, I can't really swear. I'm like, fuck yeah, you can.
Jim Sloan:Yeah, F bomb's one of my favorite things. I don't know why, but I want to thank you guys for allowing us to do this and keeping your word, like when I met you guys in Phoenix, you guys were like, yeah, bring Probook on. I'm like, oh we better get to programming and so even keeping your word when you guys texted me and you're like, yeah, dude, bring him on, so that meant a lot.
Thaddeus Tondu:Thank you so much. We do have two questions left though.
Jim Sloan:Oh, let's do it.
Thaddeus Tondu:All right, Jim. What is one question that you wish people would ask you more, but don't?
Jim Sloan:I think I alluded to it earlier is that a lot of people talk about all the good stuff. And so a lot of people ask like the softball. Questions of Oh, how'd you grow your company? Or how'd you do this? And it's like very basic surface level stuff. It's I wish people ask more of the here's what I'm struggling with and how do you guys get past that? Because most people don't want to admit what they're struggling with. They just want to say, Hey, what's your conversion rate? I don't fuck it. That's very basic level stuff. And so I guess I wish people ask me more questions about topics and things that were negatively affecting their company. But I think oftentimes egos get in the way and they won't do it. I don't know, labor rates how do you handle HR issues, how do you handle when somebody's sleeping with somebody else, like the things that we all deal with that nobody wants to talk about or they don't want to come out and say that they have going on at their company. So yeah, I think it's just more hardball questions instead of softballs.
Evan Hoffman:Love it. Yep. And then mentorship was one of the things I would have loved to have gotten into. Unfortunately ran out of time. So we'll have to get you and your brother back on. We'll get into all that too.
Jim Sloan:Brian's very PC, very he's first off, he's fucking awesome. He is my mentor, but he's exact opposite. He's very PC, very like smart, intelligent leadership and I'm like, yeah, fuck it is what it is. And I wouldn't be here without him. I dude, like he could have fired me a couple of times. There was a time I quit. That's what we'll talk about on the podcast. Oh, I love that. There was a time. So yeah, he's awesome, man. I can't wait to get him on here. We'll have fun and like I said, you guys are awesome, man. We should do it more. Yeah. Bring on some of our friends. We have a lot of really cool people in the trades that usually aren't interested in doing this. Let's get them guys on here. Cause they're fucking awesome. There's some good people in the trades that are hiding. Yeah, so that's it. Yeah, I wish people would ask me more fucked up questions. I guess
Thaddeus Tondu:Everybody has their own shit that they're going through There's eight of us in this room right now and guess what there's eight shit, eight shits that everybody's dealing with Right, every single one of us individually He's dealing with something on our own personal lives that everybody's going through it. So anyways, eight shits, seven podcasts in three days and a lot of between.
Evan Hoffman:My camera battery died. So we'll have to put up a again.
Thaddeus Tondu:Okay. Good times. All right. Whatever we'll say, we made it work. We'll start off with the other question here. Yeah, put up a banner and be like, whoops.
Jim Sloan:That's fault. It's like back in the day.
Thaddeus Tondu:Hey, there's batteries in here. We stopped and bought some yesterday. George. Yeah. You ask it.
Evan Hoffman:What's one question you wish people would ask you more but they don't?
Thaddeus Tondu:He thought we were going to ask something different, didn't he?
George Eliadis:I'm usually the one that, I'm the one learning. I'm the one asking the questions usually. This is a tough one.
Evan Hoffman:You had all that time to prepare.
Thaddeus Tondu:Yeah, but he didn't think I was going to be the question. I said two questions last time.
Jim Sloan:These damn kids.
Evan Hoffman:Tell you what, I'll buy you some more time. For the guys that are in the room here, especially the ones that know Jim, do you see how deep in thought he was before he answered that question? Have you ever seen him that deep in thought before? You can be honest.
Jim Sloan:They accuse me of listening to answer. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. That was a long pause. They're like, yeah, we're not going to shade, we're not going to shade at this dude.
George Eliadis:I wish people would. More like nitty gritty questions and help me ask questions so I can understand their situation more as opposed to just being like, what do you guys do? What are you about? I really like stories and just hearing what people are about and just having their context is a lot more helpful. So I think when I'm in a. Context where I'm talking to somebody about, scheduling, dispatching, as opposed to it just being a pitch can you ask me more questions about what you do currently that way I can, learn more about them and then I also learn at the same time. So it's like more of a win as opposed to us talking at each other.
Thaddeus Tondu:Makes sense. It's the superficial versus the deep. Yep. Got through the bullshit. Yeah. Cool.
Evan Hoffman:This has been great. Thank you so much guys for coming out, for showing up. Truly appreciate it. This has been a fantastic conversation. Can't wait to get into it again with you another time with you and your brother George, thank you so much for making the time. While you've been in town here, having a good time with these guys. I don't know why you chose them. No, I'm totally with you now. I can see why, right? They're real. They're raw. They're authentic. They're excited about trying new things. And this is something that's revolutionary for the business. So thank you both for taking the time to do this.
Jim Sloan:I appreciate you guys until next time. Cheers. Cheers.
Thaddeus Tondu:That's a wrap on another episode of HVAC Success Secrets Revealed. Before you go, two quick things. First off, join our Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/hvacrevealed. The other thing, if you took one tiny bit of information out of this show, no matter how big, no matter how small, all we ask is for you to introduce this to one person in your contacts list. That's it. That's all one person. So they too can unleash the ultimate HVAC business. Until next time. Cheers.