EP: 203 Dustin Van Orman w/ Any Hour Services - Driving HVAC Success Through Management and Leadership

From the True Grit event in Memphis, we were lucky to catch Dustin Van Orman, President of Mergers and Acquisitions at the Any Hour Group. We discussed the workings of creating loyalty and trust with customers, the upcoming interactive event for HVAC professionals, and strategies for continuous business improvement even amidst challenging markets.

3 Key Takeaways: 

• Customer Education & Options—Understand the importance of providing service and educating your customers, and offering innovative equipment options that can elevate their experience and your business’s reputation.
• Continuous Training & Leadership Development - Dive into the company's comprehensive training strategies involving rigorous ride-along programs and perpetual weekly sessions, ensuring the technical team and managers are equipped to excel.
• Smart Marketing & Analytics - Recognize that astute marketing doesn't mean merely increasing spend but entails negotiating and understanding business metrics, and data to foster long-term relationships and growth.

Listen to the full podcast for insights into creating a stellar service business that thrives on loyalty, innovation, and exceptional leadership.


Find Dustin:

On The Web: https://anyhourservices.com/
E-Mail: dustin@anyhour.com
Phone: 801-787-3546
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/any-hour-services/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dustin-van-orman-26269184/

Dustin’s Previous Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt3luO8v0ew


Join Our Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hvacrevealed
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Sponsored By:
Chiirp: https://chiirp.com/hssr
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Transcript

INTRO: 0:08

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.

Evan Hoffman: 0:23

Hey, welcome back to another HVAC Success Secrets Revealed. We are live here at True Grit in Memphis, Tennessee, the lovely Graceland and Elvis has silenced this area of the building, at least Here with Dustin Van Orman. He is what is the actual title? I forgot to grab that.

Dustin Van Orman: 0:37

I'm president of mergers and acquisitions. I do all the partnership development, people that are interested in being a part of the Any Hour Group.

Evan Hoffman: 0:43

So

Dustin Van Orman: 0:44

yeah,

Evan Hoffman: 0:44

he's with the Any Hour Group. Doing plumbing, HVAC and electrical in Utah around the Salt Lake city area. You guys are absolutely crushing it. Tremendous business model, both internally within an hour, and then also part of the in hour group and the greater impact that you're having across across the entire nation.

Dustin Van Orman: 1:00

Yeah. We're having a lot of fun. We're building a team of people across the country, the same way we built our business. We've always believed in building a business around people and the relationships that make a team strong and building a culture where people bring in values and strength to your team and we're looking for strong people in the around the country to establish a group of Intelligent people working together to build an awesome business.

Evan Hoffman: 1:25

Yeah, It is and it's a really unique approach you guys take to it. I know we talked about it the last time we had John about some of the differentiators that you have in terms of the private equity play that you have. It's really unique. I highly recommend anyone to go back and listen to that episode we'll link it down below in the show notes as well.

Dustin Van Orman: 1:40

That's good.

Evan Hoffman: 1:40

But the thing we wanted to talk about today was focusing on 2024, 2023 was hard for a lot of businesses. They struggled banging their head against the wall. They thought it would be just as easy as it was in 22 A lot of reasons as to why that came about the way that it did in terms of looking back at historical data. We had Matt Mitchel on from Service Nation when we are at AHR, and he talked in depth about that and some of the history around shipments of equipment and the different cycles that we go through there in terms of replacements, but at least on the HVAC side of things. Yeah. When we look at 23, what were some of the things that you noticed both internally at Any Hour, but then also a part of the group as well, and then outside of the group and the impacts that the year had?

Dustin Van Orman: 2:21

Yeah. Good question. We had a great year last year. We grew significantly in our business. But we did have to work harder and we have a lot of people come visit. We had, oh, close to 200 businesses that actually visited our location in Utah. Did a tour with us. And it was common for me to get the question what's the key to success? What's the silver bullet in building your business, right? I get asked that quite often and the reality is there's no silver bullet. One thing that's going to fix your business. I heard a lot of people saying also what's that one marketing strategy that will bring in more calls and we need more call volume.

Evan Hoffman: 2:54

Right because more leads fixes everything, right?

Dustin Van Orman: 2:56

Yeah. Yeah. If you haven't figured it out by now, you spent more on marketing last year and maybe you got a few more calls, but you still had a hard time is what I saw consistently and I can't say that 2024 is going to be that much easier and so what are we doing in our business is to be prepared. How are we pivoting? Cause if you don't generate more leads, how are you going to maximize what you have currently? And so we like to have those conversations. But we do, we need to be ready. I think it's a great thing to talk about today.

Evan Hoffman: 3:24

Absolutely. Well, and looking at 24, we've got a lot of things that are happening right now. Uncertainty in the economy. You guys have been through it before. You've seen this happen. You've been through 2008. When we look at what's happening in the economy, that's one aspect of it. Also in election year, which we know drives up costs on marketing, because they're trying to take up as much ad dollars as possible. Also drives uncertainty in the markets and in homeowners and their buying decisions and things like that. Talk to us a little bit about what homeowner or what business owners should be focusing on right now to take advantage of the times that we're in right now.

Dustin Van Orman: 3:58

I believe that this year is going to be an incredible opportunity for people. Yeah. I believe we should double down okay now I don't mean double down. You're marketing, right? That's going to be a mistake. Be smart about your marketing and how you're spending your dollars, but what you need to double down on is your hard work. We need to put in the work to make sure that things are working in our business, we need to take a deep dive into the numbers, the KPIs, our closing percentages, our booking percentages. Maybe we're getting the calls, but we're not booking enough. So we need to make sure we're hitting the baselines in all of our numbers in our business, so that we know that we're gonna be able to take advantage of every opportunity. Little things for example, I know one other thing that's worked very well for us is we do what we call an add on call and so, I think, for example, a customer calls in for a, service that needs to be repaired in their home. Let's say they call in for an air conditioner repair. Perfect. Mrs. Smith, thanks for calling us today. We're grateful to be able to have you as one of our loyal customers. We're gonna get this on the schedule and take care of you. Spend the time to book the call and at the end of the call, it's a conversational Mrs. Smith by the way, I just wanted to mention a promotion that we're running, where if we actually schedule this for you today, now the strategy here is you want to schedule these calls during your off season when you're a little slower. Because why would you have a shoulder season if you can book appointments today for six months from now? So Mrs. Smith, if you'll schedule today, this is the promotional price. For us, it's a 29 tune up. The money's not made in the it's made in the relationship, right? So you're establishing relationships with customers, creating a five star experience, and you're going to become their customer for life and those calls pay off we're this year over a, hundred million revenue just in that one location in Utah, and we built our business on the low cost tune up. You're bringing value to the customers. It's not a bait and switch. I hear people say that. It's not a bait and switch. Give them a real five star tune up when we teach our take I'm bouncing around here a little bit. We'll go back to that other part of the conversation. Yep When we teach our maintenance technicians how to do a tune up We want them to be in the customer's home for two hours for 29 dollars Now, you know that doesn't make any money for just 29 bucks But you have to be able to give them a five star quality tune up and be willing to walk away for 29 Now we also train them how to educate the customer give them really good options and help them understand what they can do Have in their home and what they could have in their home for example here that Reminds me of a experience I had with my wife. We needed a new fridge, right? Now I don't care what my fridge looks like But how do you think my wife feels so we go shop in fridge for a fridge You can get a fridge for five six hundred bucks do you think I spent five or six hundred bucks? I'm gonna say probably not no, because we had to have the ice maker and it had to be stainless steel and it had to be like the one I don't know. How did they do it? But the one that like is fingerprint resistant. I don't know people want the cool stuff in their house and if you're there for a 29 tune up, you're doing your customer a disservice. If one, you don't give them great service and make them a customer for life. But if two, they need to know that there's options available for some cool stuff in their house. I got the coolest fridge there is. Why? Cause we wanted it, right? Most customers did not pick the equipment in their house. It was picked by their contractor, or by the cheap person before them, right? And the only reason they don't change it is because it works, and they don't know they have an option. They want the ice maker, you just haven't shown it to them yet. Anyway, back to this call so Mrs. Smith, thanks for scheduling with us today. We've got the call all booked. We'd like to get you scheduled for a follow up maintenance call in March. March is one of those shoulder months and because you're scheduling this today, we'll lock in this promotional price of 29. Now don't worry Mrs. Smith, you don't need to remember this. We'll call you in advance and remind you of this appointment. And if something changes in your schedule, we can adjust at that time. No big deal. But now we're scheduling and in our slow season, so that when that time of the year comes around. We're not slow anymore. So at any hour in Utah, we're not slow. In the slow season we feel it a little bit like everyone does. But I'll tell you, in the 13 years I've been there, we've never had to lay people off for a slow season.

Evan Hoffman: 7:48

And

Dustin Van Orman: 7:48

you talked

Evan Hoffman: 7:49

about five star service 20,000 Google reviews on your one profile. 22,000, yeah on your one profile and then you've got a second profile. There's another 1400 on that one as well. Yeah. You guys are doing a tremendous job in terms of over-delivering on value. lot of guys get hung up on the 29 and I need to make money on this tune up or it's not worth it for us. And I don't want to come across as salesy to a customer. How do you avoid that being salesy while still presenting options and making sure that your technicians understand? Here's the second part of this, which can be even more difficult that they're not selling to themselves as a buyer, but they're presenting options for a customer to choose.

Dustin Van Orman: 8:26

Yeah it's all about educating the customer and you have to be prepared. It's a mathematic equation. That only a certain percentage of those leads are going to turn into money. The goal is not to sell something on every job. The goal is to create a five star experience, get a five star review, get a magnet on their fridge and a sticker on their furnace and a hug from your customer. I don't know, right? It's about creating value so that you're there for life. You look at our business, a hundred million in Utah and 60 plus percent of our revenues repeat business every year, right? Our customers love us. That's why we've become the dominant brand in Utah by over double because we take care of people. It's not a bait and switch. You just have to do it right. If you're going there thinking, how can I get more money out of this person? That's the wrong mentality. It's how can I provide a five star service so that they want to become our friend and our customer for life? I like to compare it to you give them these options. We know they want the ice maker in their house. We want to spend money on our house. They just don't even know what it is and so you train your technicians to just be friendly and loving and caring. And always do what is best for the customer. Don't just try to sell them something. But in most cases, customers want to have improvements.

Evan Hoffman: 9:37

Yeah,

Dustin Van Orman: 9:38

that makes

Evan Hoffman: 9:38

complete sense and it's presenting options. Allowing a customer to make the buying decision for themselves and I think that's how you avoid the salesy approach to it.

Dustin Van Orman: 9:45

Here's the other thing too about that tune up. Everyone's talking about the struggles they're having generating call volume. What's the easiest call to book?

Evan Hoffman: 9:52

A tune up.

Dustin Van Orman: 9:53

It's a tune up. It's

Evan Hoffman: 9:54

a

Dustin Van Orman: 9:54

one ticket tune up. So it's the easiest call to schedule. It's the easiest technician to hire for. Now what it does for you too is it gives you the ability to build technicians in your business, right? So you're bringing an inexperienced in the trade person, right? But the type of person that is going to present five star experiences. And so you can build those people around your values as a company, not just as a business. hire somebody because you have to have a technician. So now you can home grow and give people the expertise to be able to be top producers in the industry.

Evan Hoffman: 10:24

Now I know you guys have really honed in your training process. How long is it from hire of a green tech to being able to run a maintenance call on their own?

Dustin Van Orman: 10:31

That's a good question. So for our maintenance technicians, they're going to come in, we hire them because of who they are, what their character is, right. We bring them in. They're going to be in training for about six weeks where they're riding along with our. Not just anybody in our business, but our in our business. So we have specific people that are specific to being a field trainer, and they're not always your top producers, right? We're given a five star experience. They're the ones that follow your system the best. Okay so figure out who in your business follows all the rules cause you want to create good behavior in your future technicians and that's who your field trainers are okay. They're going to be in training for six weeks. That gives them enough basic knowledge where they can go into a home and they can perform maintenance. They're not doing service and then we give them a path. Everybody in their career wants to see a path towards success. But you can't start at the top, right? So we start them out in tune ups. They have different levels they can advance through that program. And it's usually about two seasons in the field before they're a full blown service tech. But that's the goal. It's to train them through the process to where when they're finally running full service calls on their own they're highly trained and certified in the trades.

Evan Hoffman: 11:36

Got

Dustin Van Orman: 11:36

it. So

Evan Hoffman: 11:36

obviously there's ongoing training throughout the process as well weekly, monthly, like what's that cadence look like?

Dustin Van Orman: 11:42

Everyone in our business, I'm glad you asked that question, because you know we're talking about the keys to having a successful business. Yep. Everyone in our business gets to go to at least one training per week, okay? Now, the reason I say everyone is, I think one of the areas a lot of companies are dropping the ball is they're training their technicians, and then they see a little bit of a talent in a technician, so they say, oh, that's a great guy there, let's make him a service manager or something, right? So they put him in a management position, but now they're the manager. They're expected to do the trainings. We sometimes forget to train our managers how to be a leader. Okay, and then when you look at statistics and understand that the number one reason people leave your business because of a relationship with their direct manager. It's Rarely because of pay it's because they're having a bad experience. We're talking about five star experience for your customer What about your people? Yeah, my customer is our managers. Yes And I know if I'm helping them have a five star experience, they're going to take care of our customers. It's a circle there. But yeah, leadership development is crucial in your business. If you look at the the key to success in any business it's the people, it's the culture, it's the processes, it's all those things. But who holds that all together? It's your leadership team. So the number one key to success in any business to succeed and grow and become strong, Is to have a strong foundational leadership team that is rowing in the same direction. It's being unified as a team Any Hour I've been on the management team now for over 12 years, we haven't lost a single manager the entire time I've been on the team, not one. And it's because we got each other's back. Why? Because we work together, we trained together, we did things together and we found success together. And I'm not worried about a single one of them leaving. That's the key to success in your business is surround yourself with the right people. And develop a strong leadership team and then give them the tools to succeed. Don't just expect them to know everything. Cause if you do what we did and you hire from within your business, when you find talent, I'm just an HVAC tech, right? I had to develop my ability to be an influencer and to help people around me to develop in their careers. that didn't happen overnight, but we invested in ourselves. Just like people here today, we're here at Joe's event, Joe Cacera. People are investing in themselves. You have to do that. You have to invest in your development so you can become a strong influencer in your business.

Evan Hoffman: 13:49

Stepping

Dustin Van Orman: 13:49

into

Evan Hoffman: 13:49

a leadership role, it's an entirely different trade and now you're having an impact on people. You're the reason why people are either going to stay and continue to move up or they're going to leave and it's a lot of pressure. That's right and not everyone's cut out for it and I think that's a mistake that a lot of business owners make too, is they take their top person. The one who is generating likely the most revenue for your business. And they put them into that leadership role and they may not be the best leader. So now you're having to replace the revenue that was being generated in the business by them being out in the field and you're having to really train and hone their skills as a leader and that could be a big challenge as well.

Dustin Van Orman: 14:20

Can be a big challenge. Yeah.

Evan Hoffman: 14:22

Yeah. All of this I think is really important in terms of how can we, Take advantage of every single opportunity we get in the business.

Dustin Van Orman: 14:28

Correct. Are you booking your calls right? Do you have a, are, is your closing right? Are your technicians given the right number of options? Is there follow through? I mean there's just so many measures that need to be taken to make sure that you are maximizing every opportunity, but don't bank on just spending more money and getting more calls. I'm seeing people go out of business because of that right now. Cause they thought, Oh crap, I need more calls. So they go dump it all on pay per click and they spend an absolute fortune and they don't get the return. Yep. It's going to put people out of business. They need to be maximizing what they've got.

Evan Hoffman: 14:59

Yeah. That's been a heavy focus for us on the marketing side of things is every conversation we're having with contractors is yes. We can invest in SEO you have to, that's going to take time to build up. But if you're going to start pouring money into, to pay per click, you will lose your shirt. You will, if you are not operationally efficient.

Dustin Van Orman: 15:17

Yeah.

Evan Hoffman: 15:17

And I'm

Dustin Van Orman: 15:18

not saying spend less on marketing. You need to properly market. You need to have a specific budget and stay to it and maximize your dollars. And when you're doing marketing, there's power in negotiation. Don't just say yes to whatever some package somebody throws at you. Get in there and work them hard and make them give you a better deal.

Evan Hoffman: 15:34

Yeah,

Dustin Van Orman: 15:34

it's

Evan Hoffman: 15:34

possible. It's negotiable.

Dustin Van Orman: 15:36

Go

Evan Hoffman: 15:36

and work

Dustin Van Orman: 15:37

for your marketing. Don't just spend more, go and work harder to get more out of it.

Evan Hoffman: 15:40

And

Dustin Van Orman: 15:40

I think that's

Evan Hoffman: 15:41

where having a good understanding of what's happening. Yeah. I've often heard the two things that business owners are ultimately responsible for in their business is innovation and marketing. Being responsible for it does not mean that you're doing it. It does not mean that you are setting up an ad account in Google ads or Facebook ads, correct? But having an understanding of what is happening who we're trying to attract messaging is that we're trying to get out and being in charge of that is incredibly important. It is. To know what your ROAS is at the end of the day and what's coming back into the business and to be able to turn off, to be able to turn off the ads that are not working right.

Dustin Van Orman: 16:14

Correct. Yeah. Yeah. You have to, the number one responsibility is to really know what's going on in your business because you're looking at the numbers and you're looking at the spend and you're looking at everything. So you can make intelligent decisions, not just make desperate decisions. Yep. A reoccurring theme that's been coming up recently is I'd rather be wrong to my own prosperity than right to my own demise. Yeah. And truly like allowing data to make decisions for us. I'm okay with taking an educated guess and thinking that it's going to play out and making a change because it didn't. Yeah. Here's what I'll throw out there too. I think there's a lot of business owners that are still trying to figure this out themselves, of course, and they haven't quite learned how to and what KPIs and how to track and how to really understand shifts in the business, how you can make those shifts and be successful. Come to our place or others place, whoever, go to people and learn from people. We have people come through all the time and we go through our KPIs and we show them how at a glance we can. Find the problem if we didn't succeed yesterday and we know how to fix it by tomorrow, right? You got to understand your business and it's through the numbers that you do it,

Evan Hoffman: 17:20

And that's the first step I think is knowing what numbers to look at. That's right How to pull the reports right if you don't know YouTube University There's tons of videos on there for service Titan for house call pro how to pull the reports what reports you want to look at But I think more important than knowing what benchmark you should be shooting for just yet is you need to know what your numbers are weekend.

Dustin Van Orman: 17:39

And we do. And if you're just winging it, yeah, you're going downhill. You're not going to make it right. a guy that I like to be spontaneous and wing it in a lot of things in life. And we're winging it right now. We don't know what we're talking about. It's great for this, but in running a business, you can't wing it and be successful. You have to have structure in your business.

Evan Hoffman: 17:56

In terms of business owners, understanding what benchmarks they should be shooting for, would you be able to give us a rough outline of some of those KPIs that we should be tracking, what we should buy be aiming for as a potential target. And I know we're going to get a deeper dive into this at the event you got coming up in, in April. But yeah, give us a rough outline at least.

Dustin Van Orman: 18:15

Oh, that's a big question.

Evan Hoffman: 18:17

It's a tough one.

Dustin Van Orman: 18:17

And that's a whole 30 minute conversation just in that. I'll tell you what we could do though. If people want to come out and visit, like you say, we are doing a workshop here coming up in April 16th through the 18th anyone's invited. Very low cost. We're just, we're basically doing it for free. We're just going to cover the cost of some food. show you baselines throughout our business, what we're doing in all areas and where you should be trying for. People say they're happy with 5 percent profit. I'm not. Let's figure out how we can get above 20%. So many baselines. I think we should dive into that in detail live.

Evan Hoffman: 18:48

Love it. Yeah, that'll be a great conversation.

Dustin Van Orman: 18:51

Yeah, the goal with that workshop we're doing. I go to a lot of events and it feels like so often people are getting on stage and it's great, but a lot of the conversation at the different events I go to is they're selling their product and we need these products, right? It's great to hear about that stuff. But that's not what we're doing here. The workshop we're doing, call it meat and potatoes. We really want to dive into low cost recruiting opportunities, or sorry, marketing opportunities. We want to talk about our recruiting program and how we attract top talent and retain them in our business. In Utah, 425 plus employees with a 90 percent retention rate. You can't keep that many people happy if you're not doing the right stuff. Just like your wife wants a cool fridge, your employees want a cool job. And so how can you make your company appealing for people to want to stay there? Marketing, recruiting, retention, business operations. We're going to do a tour of our facility and open up the closets. We're going to let people see exactly how we operate. We'll talk about our leadership development program. We have a training specifically for different levels of leaders and we help them advance in their leadership growth. Honestly, we're going to talk about so many powerful things, but then really whatever people want to dive into uh, as we're walking around our business, the tour we take is going to be a couple of hours long because anytime anyone has a question, we're going to stop the group and we're going to answer questions and we're going to try and, show you how we went from 2 million to over 100 million in 12 years time. Okay. These businesses we run are a lot like baking a cake. If you do the recipe the right way, your cake comes out of the oven. Just great. Okay. Let us show you how to bake a cake. We made it work. And for businesses that are doing well one of those recipes that we've always followed in building our business is going to shops. A lot of the people that listen to your podcast here have probably heard of Tommy Mello. Absolutely. I've done a tour at his shop, I think four times now. I was there last week again with my entire management team. Wow. Doing a tour. Why? We were there simply to see how he operates his business and to have a relationship with somebody powerful that's an influencer that can help us learn. Yep. So we were still doing the same thing, learning from him last week. The first week I joined Any Hour, we're going back 13 years ago. Wyatt told me the first week, pack a bag, we're going on a little trip. We jumped in his truck, we drove nine hours to Denver, and we went and saw three businesses and we did a tour, and they told us everything. And I, back then, I'm thinking wow, people will actually show you their whole business. Yeah. Yeah. People are willing to share. Now, I'll be honest, we learn a lot too when we take people around, because we learn about their business. Sometimes we're learning things we should do, sometimes we're learning things we shouldn't do. Yep. But then it's just keeping that recipe going. It was sorry if I'm talking too much, but I'm passionate about this stuff, right? Yeah. We had a business coming to our facility a few years back and we had gone to their business like five years earlier and we brought some great things home and they come on a tour of our business and they're like, Holy cow, that's great. We're going to do that idea when we get home and we're like, we got that from you five years ago. Okay. But they'd stopped implementing some of the basics. And so once you get these ideas from businesses, it's implementing them in your business and then being consistent, right? Consistency with the recipe. You'll bake a great cake.

Evan Hoffman: 22:04

Absolutely. I

Dustin Van Orman: 22:05

love that.

Evan Hoffman: 22:06

No, I'm not. Nothing fails like success. That was a Robbins thing that he's talked about many times. Yeah. He gives the example of a restaurant that was in his hometown that was thriving. Lineups out the door. Yeah. As soon as they opened, they were busy as hell every night, massive wait lists. They wouldn't even take reservations because they didn't need to. And what happened? The hostesses got snobby. The service got weak. Yeah. The chefs started demanding more money. Because they were always overworked and everything got complacent. They were out of business in three months.

Dustin Van Orman: 22:36

Isn't that crazy? along those lines I like to go have a nice dinner occasionally and take, for example, a Ruth Chris experience. I love going to Ruth Chris, but it's funny. Cause the first time I went there as a young man, I'm eating my food and they bring the bread out at the beginning and I'm just chowing into this. Like it's really good food. So I'm, I spilled all over around my plate. Breadcrumbs everywhere. Yeah. And this person comes up and starts sweeping my breadcrumbs up while I'm eating like what is going on? This is really strange, right? But the food was so good. I got to go back even though it's weird, right? So now I go to a nice steakhouse and I make a little bit of mess and I'm looking around the room saying hey Where's my bread crumb guy, right? I want my crumb swept up because that's just what I expect now, right? Go back to that 29 tune up. If you are doing the things in your service to the customer that are the little things sweeping up the breadcrumbs. People want you back. They get used to that five star experience, and they'll go back over and over again. I love to go and take my wife for a nice dinner somewhere where they dress nice, present themselves very professionally, sweep up my breadcrumbs, offer me the dessert, like it's the experience you're there for, and it's a lot more money to go get a steak there. I don't care. It's worth it. It's the value, right? It's worth it. I'm paying for the value in the experience. And it's the same with those tune ups, right? It's not a bait and switch. You're creating tremendous value. You're fine not making more than 29 on a lot of those calls, knowing that the averages play out.

Evan Hoffman: 24:02

Correct. One that the lifetime value of the customer. Do you want that change out this week or do you want it the next three years, five years, 10 years?

Dustin Van Orman: 24:09

You reminded me of a thing that happened recently. I got a call from. Colter is his name, one of my friends here at Any Hour, he's on our sales team, he's been there a long time. My history in the company, I started with the company as an HVAC service technician out there doing jobs. And then I was the sales manager and I sold jobs. And then I've had a lot of different roles, we won't get into my history, but Colter called me one day and he says, Hey, do you remember so and so? I'm like, well, yeah, they're the ones up there in Alpine, little city up there. I'd been there 10 years earlier. He's yeah, I just left his house. And 10 years have gone by and he wants the cool stuff again. So we're getting him some new equipment. And I said, that's awesome. How's he doing? He's I just got to tell you something. He told me this coldness is cold and cultures where he said he was telling me about his experience with you the first time you came and the impact you had on him when he had that breadcrumb experience. Let's call it that. And I said, that's really cool. I'm glad I made an impression on him. And he said, do you realize I looked at the history of his account, and we've been to his house over a hundred times with all the different trades in the last ten years. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. Yeah, plumbing and electric and an HVAC, all these upgrades. The guy has been working with us for years and years, hundred times in his home, because we swept the breadcrumbs. And it all started with just a simple call. That's the power the leverage of the consistency of it too.

Evan Hoffman: 25:25

Yeah, yeah, to be able to deliver that same five star experience on the very first call. That's right. So the 98th call.

Dustin Van Orman: 25:32

And

Evan Hoffman: 25:32

it was interesting too,

Dustin Van Orman: 25:33

because he did say, he told Coulter, he said, not all of them were at that same level. But because of the first one and a lot of them were occasionally that was not everybody's the same, right? But I gives us something to strive for is that top quality service, correct? He said because most of them were really five star now He did say they were still four star but he said because I could expect great service every time That's what people want. They want to be taken care of. They don't want to have to find a new company. They want to make you their company.

Evan Hoffman: 26:01

And

Dustin Van Orman: 26:01

when

Evan Hoffman: 26:01

you set that standard and that expectation within your company they come to expect it. So when it is a little bit less, they'll also let you know so that you can get better and can make it right even on that call.

Dustin Van Orman: 26:11

They will.

Evan Hoffman: 26:11

Yeah. They'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Yep. Amazing. Dustin, thank you so much for this. The event is in April 16th to 18th in Utah.

Dustin Van Orman: 26:21

We

Evan Hoffman: 26:21

would

Dustin Van Orman: 26:21

love to have anyone come. I don't care if you're in the trades we're in, or if you're. I don't care what it is. Come out. You can learn from just seeing strong businesses. You're welcome to contact me directly. My cell phone number, right? You ready for this? It's 8 0 1 7 8 7 3 5 4 6. If you get a voicemail, leave me a message or send me a text. I'm in a lot of meetings. I'm not avoiding you. Make sure I can get back ahold of you. Also email me at Dustin. at any hour dot com shows how long he's been there, by the way. Yeah. Oh, it's been such a cool journey being part of the team there. So call me, text me, email me. We'll send you a, an invitation to the event. I would love to have you there. We're keeping it tight. we have room for total of a hundred ish people, right? Is kind of the max. So if we have people bringing one, two or three, 35, 40 businesses would be ideal.

Evan Hoffman: 27:13

If they were to bring someone who's the right fit, is it a technician, a CSR, a manager, a leader?

Dustin Van Orman: 27:18

Great question. Bring them all. Yeah. If you have somebody that you need to help develop in CCR, customer care, right? Bring them. If it's somebody in dispatch, bring them. We're going to get them exposure in whatever area they need it. We'll spend the extra time. In fact, the events running, here's a little bit of a, what to expect on the event. Okay. The first night we're getting together at Topgolf, we're having drinks and hitting some balls down the course. Food and fun. Like an important part of these events is building relationships, right? So come and build some relationships with some other companies that are hungry to succeed in 2024. Okay and then the next day we'll start early with some breakfast and it's workshops We're going to hear from the experts at any hour that have helped build this thing from two to a hundred Okay, how did we do our marketing? How do we do all those things? Come learn it from us And then the next day we're gonna do probably just a half a day, but we're going to do an in depth tour and we're gonna do Q and a we're gonna have some panels on some other topics and then we'll wrap up the day a little bit early so people can get on a flight and get home. So you don't need to be away from your business too long. But if you want to stay longer and dive in a little deeper, I'll make the time to dive in deeper. If people want to get done with the event and then go back and look at an interview with the business, let's do it. Let's go spend some time together.

Evan Hoffman: 28:26

I love that. So that's great. I think an important thing to acknowledge is whether it's that event here at Service MVP doing tours, doing shop tours, looking at it from two perspectives. One, what can I learn? More importantly, what can I implement and get to work on now? And what is it that I already know, but I'm not executing at the same level?

Dustin Van Orman: 28:45

Yeah. Yeah, there are some simple things that don't cost much money that you can do today at Service MVP. To improve your business, to get more calls and to be more successful and that's what we're going over.

Evan Hoffman: 28:57

And

Dustin Van Orman: 28:57

again,

Evan Hoffman: 28:57

when we're looking at 2024 and the year that is coming, being able to maximize every opportunity and find my new improvements, because every single improvement all the way throughout the funnel is going to make an impact on the bottom line.

Dustin Van Orman: 29:09

Yep. Yeah. This year for the right businesses, the ones that are going to do what it takes is an opportunity year. Cause some are going to struggle and some are going to take market share. That's just how it is. There's going to be a victim and there's going to be a victor and I'd like to see as many victors as we can.

Evan Hoffman: 29:24

So

Dustin Van Orman: 29:25

no, yeah, shout out to Victor. We're all friends with Victor, there's going to be people that succeed this year and there's going to be people that struggle and some that go out of business and we need to stick together through this and try to make it together as an industry.

Evan Hoffman: 29:39

I appreciate you. I appreciate the Any Hour group and the value that you guys are putting out there trying to help people and trying to make an impact, knowing that you're not going to get a chance to work with everyone, but you can make a difference with anyone, no, I appreciate you, Dustin. Thank you so much for joining us.

Dustin Van Orman: 29:54

I'm happy to be here. Appreciate the work you guys are doing. You're making a difference.

Evan Hoffman: 29:57

Doing what we can.

Dustin Van Orman: 29:58

You are.

Evan Hoffman: 29:58

Little bits at a time. Yep. Awesome. And until next time, cheers everyone.

Dustin Van Orman: 30:02

See ya.

Thaddeus Tondu: 30:06

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.