EP: 199 Uzair Ahmed w/ Cottonwood Automation - Simplify. Automate. Win: The Formula To HVAC Growth

We had Uzair Ahmed on the podcast! He’s a partner at Cottonwood Automation, a digital operations agency that designs and implements digital tools and processes for HVAC companies!  We dove deep into the trenches of business metrics, recruitment strategies, and the indispensable role of automation in the HVAC industry. Listen in as Uzair shares a treasure trove of actionable advice applicable to HVAC businesses as to any service-based industry.

Three key takeaways 

• Metrics Matter: Don't wait for a perfect system to begin tracking your business metrics. Start tracking conversion rates, follow-up actions, and daily performance. A simple Excel spreadsheet can put you leagues ahead in terms of understanding and improving your operations.

• Culture & Recruitment: Your company's culture is your brand. Uzair highlighted the significance of being a "great place to work," not just to attract top talent through recruitment but also to strengthen referral programs. A positive work culture can even offset the need for higher salaries.

• Embrace Automation: Define your processes, then digitize and automate them for peak efficiency. Uzair specifically pointed to automating customer follow-ups and retention efforts, noting the importance of personalized text messages and emails to maintain a customer-focused approach.

Tune in to HVAC Revealed for the full scoop on how Uzair Ahmed is revolutionizing the way HVAC businesses operate, and maybe pick up a few tips on how to supercharge your own operation. 

Remember, sharing knowledge is the engine of innovation and growth. 

Find Uzair :

Book a Discovery Call Today!: https://www.cottonwoodautomation.com/
E-mail: uzair@cottonwoodautomation.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/uzairahmed2/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cottonwoodautomate/

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
On Purpose Media: https://onpurposemedia.ca  

Transcript

Uzair Ahmed: 0:02

The key about marketing is to be different and not look like a marketer in the same way as the key to be a good sales guy is not to come across as a sales guy.

Thaddeus Tondu: 0:12

Welcome back to another episode of HVAC Success Secrets Revealed with that he's an FN where we have good conversations, good people, any good conversation worth having is worth having drunk. In this case, I'm going to be sticking to the H2Os today. I had the flu yesterday, so that does happen to us mere mortals that we do get sick every now and again.

Evan Hoffman: 0:29

You were completely out of it like

Thaddeus Tondu: 0:30

I was completely out of it. Yeah. I was like, flew ran into the bathroom. I didn't really leave the room my bedroom at all yesterday. It was a tough one and that wasn't even maybe slightly man, cold a little bit, but not so much, I'm sucking her up here today and getting going. Anyways today we have on Uzair Ahmed from Cottonwood Automation and I remember, look, I think back to the conversation that we had with him about prior to bringing him onto the show in really just process automation and really looking at how you can be better at your processes and your operations in order to be able to systematize that and look those companies that aren't good at their processes and their operations in 2020, anytime for that matter, but specifically in the market and what we're seeing right now, we're going to suffer, they're going to falter and so making sure that you have a detailed process automation is going to be good. I'm excited to dive into that, especially with some of their three pillars that they look at. So hiring, data tracking, building processes, right? So basically business intelligence and cleaning up your data. So you can make better data informed decisions on everything that you do is a super powerful piece.

Evan Hoffman: 1:30

Love it. Yeah. I was listening to an audio yesterday and they were talking about how for the companies that were thriving and doing well in this last year in 2023 and growing at a rate that most companies were when others were struggling, the owners had no idea what it was that they were doing. That was so exceptional. Really what they were doing was the fundamentals extremely well and that's processes, procedures, efficiencies within the business. So excited for this.

Thaddeus Tondu: 1:54

That's going to be a great show. But of course it would not be possible without our sponsors. We've got Chiirp, we've got Elite Call, we've got On Purpose Media. Let's start off with Chiirp. So transform your home service business with Chiirp, the ultimate automation toolbox, capture more leads, connect instantly and skyrocket your sales. They integrate seamlessly with platforms like ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro. Automated texts, emails, ringless voicemails. They can also help boost your Google reviews and your customer loyalty through their proven rehash program. Schedule your demo today. Get an exclusive 25 percent off your first three months. Visit chiirp.com/hssr to get in on that right now.

Evan Hoffman: 2:28

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Thaddeus Tondu: 2:58

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INTRO: 3:37

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: 3:52

Hey, welcome Uzair to the show live from the CMPX event in Toronto, which is the Canadian version of AHR for those American folks that are listening.

Uzair Ahmed: 4:02

Hey, how you doing? Thanks for having me on.

Thaddeus Tondu: 4:04

No worries. Thanks for coming on. Welcome well, I think let's just start off with the easy layup. Walk us through your journey into getting involved into the HVAC space.

Uzair Ahmed: 4:12

So it was a pretty random approach to getting in there. Yeah. So I graduated from school in chemical engineering and I didn't want to work for an engineer as an engineer for long. So I started my mobile mechanic business out in Western Canada. I thought I was a genius. I figured out that cars could be fixed on site and no one else had thought about this, but it turns out that there was a reason for that and it was because it's a very difficult business. So I figured out, I built my own fuel service management tool, which is similar to ServiceTitan, built out the business, learned the struggle of running a service only effectively HVAC business I found out later on and got it to 23 different cities, built it up and then it got to the point where it started running itself and things are very smooth and growing on its own and I got bored and at this time I had a lot of clients, fleet clients that were HVAC businesses, and I got to build a relationship with them and then I learned that through that process, that experiences that I had building my mobile mechanic business was almost directly applicable to a HVAC company that did service only, but they have the difference, which is install them. They have the crown jewel that I was missing and so I found that I was helping my, I started helping out a few of my clients with their business and then I realized that there's a real opportunity over here and then I expanded from there and that's my story into HVAC.

Thaddeus Tondu: 5:29

In the experience of building a business too, a lot of times you were like I've never built a business. I'm just going to try this out. You already built one, right? It's the same thing. It's a service offering. It's just a different service offering operations are the same too.

Evan Hoffman: 5:41

Yeah, definitely. When you looked at those home service companies that were clients of yours that you were trying to help out and what was the missing elements that you saw they really needed and lacked and you were able to fill in those gaps?

Uzair Ahmed: 5:55

So I feel like a lot of businesses were run by owners that hustled their way out of bad business habits, so they were just really good at selling and there was no processes. Everything was the owner's head. They would have software, but they weren't using the software properly or maybe a fraction of it if they were using it and They had really no idea what their numbers were until they did their, their looked at their QuickBooks after two or three months they're like, Oh, I actually lost money where I made money and then this thing that these guys were making money running businesses like that, where in my business, I had to be hyper efficient with no mistakes, just a quick out of profit. I was like, give us an opportunity here and that's what I started helping them out with just building their business up from scratch and then maximizing the technology that's out to automate certain processes, which are just a drain on everybody.

Thaddeus Tondu: 6:42

Hyper efficiency, it's an interesting term to be able to be hyper efficient inside your business, to be able to just eke out a profit. In what ways with HVAC businesses, have you seen the biggest lack of efficiencies?

Uzair Ahmed: 6:54

Usually it's the lead follow up, answering phone calls, making sure you've answered the phone calls properly, make sure you're following up on leads and especially service appointments. When you go out there you do a quote. you actually following up if they don't convert right there on site and I know people do like their regular one or two phone calls as a follow up, but you need to have some sort of automation there because people are obviously going to forget, or they get busy or things like that and I know this firsthand because I needed a new, I was thinking of getting a new keycard. So I called a bunch of different contractors to my house to give me quotes. Sales process was fine depending on the business, but there was no follow up at all and I was a pretty hot client I was like, I'm going to buy the person that follows up at least five times. No one did not a single person followed up. I think it was two follow ups and that was it.

Thaddeus Tondu: 7:38

Wow.

Uzair Ahmed: 7:39

I was trying to buy it so much. I'm like a willing buyer and I've had so many people come to my house and no one's followed up and I'm just like the first, I just started calling other people. come fix it for me now

Thaddeus Tondu: 7:48

think about that people do get busy and you think about the consumer sentiment and what's out there. Soft consumerism right now for there's going to need to be a lot of follow up in some certain instances. So I guess in what ways would you look at automating that? Like, how can somebody go about and say, all right I know that my follow up is shit. First off, if you have a good salesperson, they should be following up and a good salesperson knows the need to follow up and follow up and follow up regardless of that, looking at building in an automation into that, where would one start? What would be something that they would look to automate? Would it just be. voicemails, or are you talking like text messages or phone calls? Like, how do you do that?

Uzair Ahmed: 8:23

I don't like to just do like a blanket thing. It depends on what their business needs are, right? Where the problems are. So one of the big things that I like to, obvious things I like to do for a business is install Slack, get everyone on Slack, stop sending to their text messages, and then connect your CRM with Slack so that when jobs are posted or things that need to be, reminders and all that stuff show up on Slack and everyone knows what's going on. So for example, most companies, they have one person at the office, text the technicians, right? And no one knows what they said to each other and that creates a level of inefficiency in a business. Cause now if one person, only two people know, and someone else has to know they don't know. But when you have everything on a Slack, if you use Slack for everything, that way, everyone knows what's going on in the company and then this is a starting point within Slack. You can build so many different automations, right? Another example is depending on the weather, you're going to run different ads. If it's extremely cold, you'll automatically run a set of Google ads for cold weather. If it's extremely hot, you'll run Google ads for a certain type of weather or if your schedule is full, it's going to stop running Google ads. Things like that.

Evan Hoffman: 9:26

No, I love that and that's something we've been talking about with a variety of different vendors on as well. I know we talked to the Amanda from profit down in where were we again?

Thaddeus Tondu: 9:34

We're in Los Angeles, but they're from Calgary.

Evan Hoffman: 9:36

LA. There we go. Yeah, and it was same concept, and I know action furnace, we talked about it with them when we had them on the podcast as well. That's something that they do and they implement in their businesses, being able to book out a calendar based off of availability. I think one of the symptoms of all of this is that it's really easy to get lazy during good times. And 2020, 2021, 2022 they were really good times to be in a home service business. It was really easy to make sales. It was really easy to get leads and get the phone to ring. People had extra income. The economy was booming. Inflation was through the roof. And as all that was happening, people were spending a lot of money and free to do that. It's also exposing a lot of weaknesses within companies now and ours included, right? And we've been able to identify what those are and start to make those improvements and those changes. But what's your process to start poking holes in a company to see where those inefficiencies are and what questions do you start asking of an owner to identify where there's areas of opportunity for improvement?

Uzair Ahmed: 10:37

The first thing we look at is the numbers, right? And I don't want to look at your revenue or top line, stuff like that. I want to look at your conversion rate. I want to know your lead to time lead time to connect ratio. I need to know quote, follow ups percentage. I need to know the key metrics that together lead to the revenue number. Like how do you get there in the first place? And a lot of people don't have that information ready for me. So the first thing is Hey, All right. So you want to double your revenue, or you want to grow this, or you want to do this. How do we break it down to actionable steps every single day that you have control over? That's not a lagging indicator that we can focus on. So is it, do we need to increase the number of leads coming in or do we have enough leads coming in to really increase the the conversion rate is our sales process for, do we never answer our phone calls? Like those are the kinds of questions I need to understand. Before I decide on what to work on first.

Thaddeus Tondu: 11:25

Something that you said, and I'm trying to remember the name. Laura Kelly, Joshua Kelly, the Growth Clover. I can't remember the name that they said this was, but they have a daily action report or daily organization report. It's essentially breaking it down to, okay, what's my goal right now. Okay and this actual thing and measuring it daily is the thing that that's super important DP report. That's what it is. Daily progress report. So the daily progress report is super important, right? And the super important metric. Now, I think there's daily progress reports for different things in this particular instance, what would you say would be the key metrics and key variables that somebody is going to want to keep an eye on daily?

Uzair Ahmed: 12:00

Number of calls and booking rate, average revenue per technician. The things that you have control over time to connect to new leads and then those I like to focus on things that you have control over, right? I don't want to. Revenue is a nice profit is nice, but what are the actions that will get you that number? If I told you why are you guys, why is our missed call rate so high? That's a number you can control, right? Number of calls coming in, like that's a bit variable. Like as much as we love to do, like we control number of calls coming in. There's so many variable aspects to it, right? But conversion rate, are you booking 90 percent of your jobs or are you only booking 10 percent of your leads? Those kinds of things is what I would focus on and then the number of follow ups per contact or per lead that's been sent out. Things that you have control over. How many outbound calls did you have today?

Thaddeus Tondu: 12:45

And there's a lot of important ones in there, right? There's a lot of different metrics and here's the thing is you got to measure these things daily because if you're not measuring them daily, performance monitors performance gain when you think about that and if you can monitor the right performance, the right metrics, the right numbers, now you can impact that change within your business. If you're only doing it monthly and you're on a lagging report, good example, I'm just going to use Profit loss statements, right? So a lot of times, this is how we do it in our business and we're not quite at the point of going less than this, but a lot of companies, and to go back to what you said, they haven't looked at two, three months. Some companies will get their profit loss on the 15th of the month for the following month. Now you're already halfway through this month. How can you enact change on a quicker level if you're only getting it? Every month and it's delayed, right? And so looking at ways to be able to pull this data in either in real time or the next day based off the previous day's data is going to be a super important thing. If somebody's never done this before, they're like shit, I don't even know where to even begin because there are some people that are out there that have never done this. What would you tell them?

Uzair Ahmed: 13:46

I

Thaddeus Tondu: 13:46

would say open

Uzair Ahmed: 13:47

up an Excel spreadsheet and look at the numbers that you care about and just manually edit and it like have your phone person put in every phone call in an Excel spreadsheet don't overcomplicate it and I'm actually like torn about that. I'm like, do we want an automatic dashboard that pulls the information from everywhere or just force an Excel spreadsheet, which forces you to manually get the information because the act of manually getting information there's something to that I think.

Thaddeus Tondu: 14:12

I remember doing cold calls in the previous business that we were in and I had a, literally a piece of paper and it was I literally wrote down ticks on the paper and I did that until my paper's full and then I entered into an Excel sheet after the fact to be able to compute numbers, et cetera it can be that simple too, to be able to just, okay, write it down and you know what? You're not going to get a hundred percent accuracy because human nature, right? You're going to miss a few things, but you're getting 90 percent accuracy. 90 percent accuracy in a metric that you just started tracking is better than no metric to track in the first place.

Uzair Ahmed: 14:41

Exactly. Just so you have an idea, right? And if you're tracking the same way, you can also see trends on it too. It's just, please track it. It's that's the difference in a professional company that can grow really fast and a company that's just going to stay at 500 to 1 million forever.

Evan Hoffman: 14:55

The thing I love about you saying start with an Excel spreadsheet or a piece of paper. It's not allowing yourself to create an excuse as to why you can't start it today. To say, Oh, I need to have it automated, or I need this perfect dashboard that I can have up on my wall and displayed around the office and all of this. Yeah, that's the ideal. But what we can, what can we do in the meantime, to make sure that we're starting to pay attention to this now and not wait for that.

Uzair Ahmed: 15:18

And a lot of people make that mistake where they're just like I don't have any information. So whatever. I have a thousand other more important things to worry about.

Thaddeus Tondu: 15:27

What's the saying that I always use, Evan? Done is better than perfect?

Evan Hoffman: 15:30

Something like that.

Thaddeus Tondu: 15:31

Look, so that's a tough, that was a tough thing for me to wrap my head around, or this is done is better than perfect because I like to some instances of some things is the type A part of me wants to make sure that is dialed in and fully detailed and up until The nth degree, but you can edit till editing sake you might as well just have a done is better than perfect mentality. At some point, they're not saying you do shit stuff. You have to actually have a decent output from it, but I think when more people can wrap their head around, done is better than perfect. You'll start to see progress and change

Evan Hoffman: 15:59

speed of implementation.

Thaddeus Tondu: 16:00

Yes, sir.

Uzair Ahmed: 16:01

It's a going fast, right? be quick, but don't be in a hurry,

Evan Hoffman: 16:05

right? Hustle, but be patient, right?

Thaddeus Tondu: 16:09

Why am I dirty on those? I don't know about yours, but Hey all right. Perfect time to go into the random question generator. So, random question generator brought to you by On Purpose Media, where we're more plugged into digital trends than a teenager with their first smartphone. Teenagers are smartphones. I can't they probably won't have smartphones by the time my kids are teenagers will probably like bump on their wrists and it'll pull up a screen in front of them. Anyways so the random question generators are. One of my favorite parts of the show. I'm going to, you don't get to know what the questions are. You just get to choose. Do you want question one, two, or three? I ask it to you. It's random. It has nothing to do with what we're talking about. So do you want question one, two, or three?

Uzair Ahmed: 16:44

Two.

Thaddeus Tondu: 16:45

Two. If you were a soup, what kind would it be?

Uzair Ahmed: 16:49

Chicken noodle soup. Cause the first thing came to mind. I've never thought about that.

Thaddeus Tondu: 16:53

That's why it's a random question. I was like, do you go with tomato? Or do you go with mushroom? What is it? I'm somebody saying the most Canadian meal that you could have and somebody was like, it's pork chops and in green frozen, green beans. You dump a can of Campbell's mushroom soup over top of it and you just put it in the oven and you bake it and I'm like, how is that the most Canadian meal that you've ever had?

Uzair Ahmed: 17:13

That's the thing. I don't like wet foods. Those are my thing. It's just the wet foods, not my thing.

Thaddeus Tondu: 17:18

All right. The more, so what you're saying is don't get soup fruits are when you're, I'll make sure that it's a nice steak or something like that. Something that's all simple things in life, right? The simple pleasures. One thing that the automation part of things in hiring data tracking, we already talked a little bit about data tracking and building processes in terms of looking at. That part of things in, let's talk about hiring for starters, right? And looking at some of the, you always hear the business is saying, I can't find good people and then you hear other businesses saying, I have too many applicants and I have great people, there's a big juxtaposition between the two of those. How can one person go from the first person I can ever find good work? To the latter saying, I have great people and I have no issues. I'm filled with resumes all the time.

Uzair Ahmed: 18:05

I have heard, I can't find people for the longest, since I got in this industry and I've heard that over and over again and then I asked them, why can't you find good people? And they haven't even bothered to post up an ad. So I am now like, when people tell me that I've always dug deeper into that question and I have found most of these guys haven't even attempted to hire people. They're just like, Oh yeah, I'm like, I have an ad and you see this ad hasn't been updated since seven, eight months ago. And there's a bunch of applicants that haven't even looked at it or they're just like, I can't find anybody, but they've made no attempt whatsoever. So I like, unless you've done what I've done, cause I was, I'm from my other business. I'm still hiring technicians. We go through the ringer. We have indeed ads. We spend the money on it, running Facebook ads, building a brand around hiring, building referral programs at that point, I can say, I cannot find good people. Then I got to look at an LMIA and do all that stuff. But for a lot of people in HVAC, there's two things you need to build a recruiting brand, right? So you're going to have a good place to work effectively and I always say always be recruiting and that means just always having ads in the background looking for people looking for workers have the referral program have all that stuff and then when someone applies quick do some quick respond back to them really quickly to have those phone calls pretend like you're going to be busy soon, right and Invest in people before you actually have the work is also a good one because the biggest mistake that I made before Is I used to be really busy before I hired someone you and then it would just, it would never line up properly. You send this guy and he's just super busy. But I find that if you hire someone earlier, you're eventually going to get busier, but there's a slow ramp up process and we do that slow ramp up process. It works way better, but to summarize from what I experienced so far, people say I can't find anyone. They just haven't tried hard enough.

Thaddeus Tondu: 19:45

Probably very accurate. I've done the data and looked at it either, but it's, it is true. Okay well, where are you actually hiring new people from?

Evan Hoffman: 19:50

And then even when you think back to what we listened to when we were at Epic last week, when, so we went and sat in on Tommy Mello's message that he gave and he talked about eight players. It's you always need to be looking out for a players. You have no idea where they're going to come from. So you always need to be recruiting and always be looking at it. I love what you said to respond quickly, treat it like it's a sales lead. The difference between a B player and an A player, when it comes to a technician is dramatically different in terms of the end result.

Uzair Ahmed: 20:18

Yeah it's wild. Like it's such a crazy number, same number of leads. Same number of work, but an A player is like doing two to three times the revenue of a B or C. It's wild.

Thaddeus Tondu: 20:30

Yeah, one A player is the same as three B players. Like it, and

Uzair Ahmed: 20:34

I believe that 100%. It's the craziest thing. We talk about it, like it's just a, it's a thing, right? But it's, I want to emphasize it is such a big deal, game changer in the business.

Thaddeus Tondu: 20:44

Even to go back with the Tommy Mello's thing too, right? And that always be recruiting aspect of things. What he says when you, when he finds a good server at a restaurant, for example it's not the, Hey, are you looking for work? If my car call me, it's like, Hey, I want that person. So he grabs their info and he follows up with them and he tries to get them in for an interview. Say, Hey, come for a ride along and he follows up with them until he gets them in for a ride along and so it's not just waiting for people and waiting for things to come to you. It's actually going out there and hunting and actively recruiting it right into the business and having that recruiting mindset. But the one thing you mentioned was a referral program, and I don't think this gets enough conversation or enough light into daily conversations itself. So what have you seen for success in terms of a recruiting referral program?

Uzair Ahmed: 21:26

Just be a great, be actually be a great place to work. You can't, no referral program is going to work. You can throw all the money in the world at it and whatnot, but people aren't going to burn their social capital unless you actually are a good place to work and you're doing well and people like working there that I think works the best. I know it's not the answer you're looking for in terms of it's not a cool answer, but it's a real answer. The same thing with referral programs for a company, right? People are going to refer you if they like you, even if you don't have a referral program. Referral program is accelerant, but it's useless unless you have something worth referring. So I think if people would have that idea and you just make sure that they really have a great place to work.

Thaddeus Tondu: 22:01

And in terms, Oh, I mean, that's, that's culture, right? That starts from the ground up. And when you build that great culture, people want to be there and they want to get their friends to work there as well. Do you incentivize referrals at all? Have you seen any success or people doing a specific thing in terms of incentivizing referrals?

Uzair Ahmed: 22:16

I used to have an incentive program for referrals, but. I found that there was no need for it. I was just spending money that I didn't have to spend because people were just referring their technicians, their friends to it and I was like, they're going to refer anyways. I don't know why I need to spend this extra money on it. So that's like where I got, that's where I'm at. I'm like, that's my experience with referral programs. It's if you have a great place to work, you're providing a lot of, you're providing the highest wage in the industry. The gimmick is good culture. There's no micromanagement. They're going to refer their friends to it no matter what. So I took that budget and put it into Indeed instead.

Thaddeus Tondu: 22:47

There you go and then you get even more people coming in.

Uzair Ahmed: 22:49

Yeah, that was my experience. Everyone's got a different experience though.

Evan Hoffman: 22:53

And I remember when Thad and I worked for other companies, we talked about having referral programs for hiring and our quote unquote sales page back to the team was, we can either pay indeed, or we can pay you like where do you want that money to go? I'd rather give that money to my team and incentivize them to go and find more people. Who would be interested? And yes, like you said, if you don't have the culture that they're going to be excited about referring you, then it's a mute point. Money is not going to make up for that. So you need to have both, in my opinion it's what's the driver of it? Are you talking about it? And then the fun thing too, is when you're promoting it and you're talking about, Oh, this is our top tech for the week. Here's what they did. Oh, by the way, they were referred by so and they were referred by so and you show this. Whole tree and train of referrals and it just becomes part of the culture as well, is that we continually to add to our team through referrals.

Uzair Ahmed: 23:39

I found that money talks the loudest. So like just pay a lot of money, pay the, pay the, so from, for when I work with my client, my goal is to use automation outsourcing labor in the head office and just smooth, making things super efficient in the head office so that they're become very profitable their core. So that they can afford to hire and pay their technicians a top salary. That's it. At the end of the day, people care. People will leave. I've seen people leave for one or 2 an hour more. So I'm like, if you just pay the most, that will make up for a lot, pay the most, don't make their life miserable and you'll have plenty of referrals that way and hire the definitely helps.

Thaddeus Tondu: 24:16

If

Uzair Ahmed: 24:16

you have

Thaddeus Tondu: 24:16

a phenomenal culture and you have a great culture and you have everything built on there, they will be okay working for a dollar or two less because at the end of the day, it's not necessarily. Always about money. I was seeing a picture the other day or saw a picture. I always mix those two words up from proper grammar. But the, but there was a picture that I read and it was a quote and saying your boss and your significant other. are the two most impactful people in your life and so you better choose both wisely and so if you have a bad boss, what do you think about that? You think you spend a third of your time working in a day, right? And if you're working a seven hour day or an eight hour day, it's 24 hours a day, you're spending a third of your day working. The other third, you're likely spending with your spouse and your kids and then the other third, you're sleeping and so you think about that timeframe. If you have a bad boss, if you have a bad place to work, if you have a bad culture, people aren't going to want to be there. I haven't experienced that yet in my career so far. Like I hear stories about bad places to work. I'm like, I can't believe some people would work there who acts like that. But I've never experienced that myself. It's maybe I got lucky in life or. I haven't, yeah, I haven't experienced any part of any organ, right?

Uzair Ahmed: 25:18

That helps. I guess that helps.

Thaddeus Tondu: 25:21

And I have worked at bad cultures, not like super, super bad, but in, in places where the culture was shit and I didn't like it and that was the only reason, one of the only reasons that I left that industry in the business that I was in is because the culture that it was in the office place, hated it, didn't want to be there, loved the work, hated the culture.

Uzair Ahmed: 25:37

I guess I was just hoping to say, I've been my own boss for such a long time. I'm like, Oh, about.

Thaddeus Tondu: 25:44

It is a lot better and a lot easier to impact culture because now you can run it how you want to run it.

Evan Hoffman: 25:48

So we talked a lot about different areas of the business to focus on, different things to track, different things to look at when we start to make the move into automations and how can we take the manual labor out of this? What are some of the first areas you look to, to start to implement some of these automations?

Uzair Ahmed: 26:04

One of the first areas that I look for is lead management, quote, customer follow ups, connecting the different, like connecting your CRM to your QuickBooks, for example, or connecting your marketing software to your fuel service management, just like making sure all the software that you use. Connects to each other. So if there's any manual copy paste that you're doing, get rid of that right away. That's one thing you should not be doing. Other stuff then becomes Hey, what project are we going to work on? Are we going to work on a retention project? That's one of the first things like retention, right? If you already have a customer base. How do we make sure that when anyone uses your company, you will always stay top of mind forever. So those are like the first things I work on, but it depends on the business. Like some people are so far advanced where you start doing things like, Hey, how do we automate your Google ads based on what your schedule is like versus some people are so far behind. It's like, how do we, that's where it, that's where it comes out, right?

Evan Hoffman: 26:56

Yeah, of course. When it comes to retention, what sorts of things are you looking to automate? For retention, you said you were talking about retention of clients.

Uzair Ahmed: 27:03

Yeah, so one of the first things is like to send text messages and emails asking for reviews, you can set up an automation for that. Some CRMs do people maximize it, make sure it's multiple emails. Make sure you're sending emails for maintenance. Yeah. Maintenance work needs to get done. Make sure the emails that are being sent out is automatic based on their previous job date or just send them, when this, put them on a list, put them on an automation and send them emails every six months so you know that you guys still exist. Sometimes you a membership program, get them on when they book a job and they haven't signed up for a membership, get them on a certain list, but you keep on talking about that membership program. Those are the kinds of things that I mean when I'm talking about mindfeeding in general, overtention in general.

Thaddeus Tondu: 27:42

Multiple touch points, but various different things, right? The more touch points that you can have with an end consumer, the more, the higher the ability to remain sticky in their mind.

Uzair Ahmed: 27:50

Exactly. You're going to find that balance for doing it too much, like text messaging limited limit to the text messaging, because that's like a hundred percent open rate, but it's also a hundred percent annoyance rate. So emails are my go to.

Thaddeus Tondu: 28:01

So how would you differentiate between, because text messages, I mean you hear a lot of people talk that text messages are the next email, and they're their bread and butter, and they want to automate a lot of text messages for those sorts of things. How do you differentiate between what's a, where to go towards texting somebody, and where do you go towards emailing somebody?

Uzair Ahmed: 28:21

If

Thaddeus Tondu: 28:21

it's like

Uzair Ahmed: 28:21

an urgent thing where you're talking about I try to text as little as possible, even though it has a high open rate, it does annoy people way more than an email, right? So people will be looking at their phone Oh, look, text message from X, Y, Z, unless you have something good to say, don't be like, Hey, I'm going to give you 5 percent off your book right now. Like things like that will ruin your brand. But if you're going to say, Hey. We talked to your technician, Jeff came by, he said to follow up in six months because of your XYZ. If it's a customized text message that looks like it would be for you, like someone actually wrote it. That's worth seven, I think that was a difference that I learned when I was sending text messages when you make it customized that you actually sent it for them so you can automate the job and the name and everything, but it has to look real and people will mostly respond to it or take it seriously. But if it's like a generic text like reply are to stop or whatever it just. It doesn't hit the same I think.

Thaddeus Tondu: 29:13

No, I think you're right on that. Like I think about myself and the consumer, depending on your market too. Depending on the age of the customer too. Like I'm sure there's a bunch of different variables that go into the demographics of the individual. But I think about myself and me, you're right. If you're just sending me a 5 percent offer, I'd be Pound's hand a custom one, because I get a lot of text messages in a day, right? The one you are, right. The ones that are spammy, people don't like. And then now with A2P down in the States, you've got to be sure what you're doing, et cetera, et cetera. So a very good point. I like it.

Uzair Ahmed: 29:40

Value marketing, right? Don't annoy people. Don't waste their time with a 5 percent off offer.

Evan Hoffman: 29:44

Oh, a hundred percent. How do you balance that communication then to make sure that you're adding value more than you're just asking for a sale?

Uzair Ahmed: 29:51

Value can also just be funny. Like you don't have to teach about anything. I've realized that I used to write these newsletters that were just. Really funny and I spent like a lot of time making jokes and everything and people loved it. They like loved looking at it. It's just too much work. I can't be a 24 seven comedian out here. But I was sending these newsletters and people were really happy with it. they're like, I replied back. I love this. It doesn't have to be talking about cars. I would talk about the most random things and they just liked it. So that was a really successful strategy that I had. It was just the effort was too high on it. But if someone is got a knack for writing good emails, I think she should just go for it and I was sending once every month. Cause I started just talking about also community newsletters. If you are in a particular community and you write and you like the one thing all your customers have in common is they all are part of one area. So if you write about things that are like relevant to them, because they live in X, Y, Z, or things that you've seen, or even adventures of things you've learned at your job about HVAC stuff, or, I was in this client's house and I realized they had this, and I thought, maybe other people have this problem too and you make it entertaining and fun and short and sweet and do that often enough. You're going to have people be like, that's an expert that I'll look at their emails, I'll open it up. But if you just like stand promotional emails all day or just bland, templated emails, the key about marketing is to be different and not look like a marketer in the same way as the key to be a good sales guy is not to come across as a sales guy, right? So just don't let people put you in a box is my.

Evan Hoffman: 31:12

Love it my head was just spinning around, like making a recruiting ad that started off with you tearing off the Jersey of your favorite football team or your local football team, whatever of the area. Be like, yeah are you as frustrated with this team as I am? Great. Are you as frustrated with your job as you are with this team? Cool. Then you should probably look us up.

Thaddeus Tondu: 31:31

Unless the team is actually doing really good, then probably not. You'd have to choose one of the teams that isn't doing good in the area.

Uzair Ahmed: 31:37

You guys are in Calgary. So they're fine for a while, right?

Thaddeus Tondu: 31:40

I would love to tear apart. I would love to tear apart a Calgary flames Jersey, just for the sake of tearing apart a Calgary flames Jersey. I don't know where there's, I don't know where there's Jersey underneath it.

Evan Hoffman: 31:49

No, but you do need to get creative in that messaging and I remember when we had Jody Underhill on and he ran, he runs a recruiting agency down in the States and one of the things that he has in his funnel is a text message with a picture of a dog on it and it says, Hey, every time that an application gets filled out. Whatever the dog's name is, gets a treat, don't leave him hanging. Like he really wants one, right? And then it's just, it's something that's funny. It's comical and it's added into the sales funnel for in that sense.

Uzair Ahmed: 32:16

That's our referral program our referral program is that too. It's we don't give you 25. We give this dog at a shelter, 25, a picture of a dog at a shelter. We're going to, that's what I found worked really well cause I was like, no one really cares about 25, but everyone cares about dogs and charity that's the one charity that pretty much everyone cares about and animal shelter. It's boom.

Thaddeus Tondu: 32:36

No, not cats. Not cats. Sorry for cats. Sorry, cat lovers.

Uzair Ahmed: 32:41

I love cats.

Thaddeus Tondu: 32:43

Never owned one. I'll pet a cat, but I just, I don't want a cat in my house so.

Uzair Ahmed: 32:46

My wife was not a cat person and we got two cats and now she's it's a, you can't trust cats. If you're not into cats, you just can't trust them. You never know what they're going to do. But if you have your own, it's different.

Thaddeus Tondu: 32:56

Yeah, they will still do it. Like we grew up with cat, like a cat in the house and even if, even in that, like they will still just, they'll look at you in the eye and they'll just do something and it's like a toddler, don't do that. Bam. They do it anyways. That you have the party coming up and it's the MPX talk a little bit about condo and automations. What do you, how can you help businesses? Obviously we've alluded to it all throughout, but we want you to provide a lot of value. Let's give you an opportunity to talk a little bit more about what you guys do and how you can help.

Uzair Ahmed: 33:19

Yeah. So at Cottonwood Automation, we work with, we partner up with businesses. So my goal is to stay with businesses for the longterm. I. Since I started, all my clients have been here because there's multiple stages that your business goes through. So if you have 1 million, you have certain needs. When you have 4 million, you've got different needs. I've seen the growth throughout. So I'm the one that will help you get to that level by, everyone, a lot of business owners I find are told what to do. They have all this coaching options that you can read all these books, but you're too busy and no one actually teaches you how to do it. But we're the ones that come in and actually implement what you should be doing with your business and make sure it becomes successful. So we're not just the coaches and tell you what to do with the actual implement of your business. So would there be automation, setting up the right marketing, recruitment, anything like a bus, like a business Swiss army knife. My team will come in there and implement the projects for you.

Thaddeus Tondu: 34:10

And if you want to get in touch with them, check them out. cottonwoodautomation.com or uzair@cottonwoodautomation.com. But before we wrap up, we do have one final question here for you. What is one question that you wish people would ask you more, but don't.

Uzair Ahmed: 34:25

Do

Thaddeus Tondu: 34:25

you

Uzair Ahmed: 34:25

only do automation? And I, the answer to that is no. I just like, I want to solve your business problems. If automation is just a tool in my toolbox, it's not the end all be all of what I do, right? So sometimes it's like going back to drawing board and rewriting that process for you or figuring out, do you even need to do this in the first place? So it's a whole digital operations is an all encompassing thing.

Thaddeus Tondu: 34:47

Nope.

Uzair Ahmed: 34:47

Makes sense. I like that

Evan Hoffman: 34:48

It's filling the holes right in the funnel, making sure that everything's getting down to the bottom and you're being as efficient as possible in doing it.

Uzair Ahmed: 34:54

Exactly and there's many tools to get there.

Evan Hoffman: 34:57

Love it. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for adding value, being concise and to the point getting a lot of information out there. I got a lot of notes here that that I want to follow up on. So thank you so much.

Uzair Ahmed: 35:07

Perfect. Thanks for having me guys.

Thaddeus Tondu: 35:08

Nice. And until next time,

Evan Hoffman: 35:10

Cheers.

Thaddeus Tondu: 35:14

Well, 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.