#3 - Chris Wisniewski - ICS HVAC

Welcome to another episode of The Digital Toolbox Podcast! 

Each episode features a guest in the home services industry, sharing their personal journey and the challenges they've overcome to get to where they are today. This is a very conversational podcast and we do not stick to a pre-written script. We keep it real!

Today our gest is Chris Wisniewski, the owner of ICS HVAC in Belleville, New Jersey.

On this episode me and Chris discuss various topic including being repeatable with SOP's, Chris' marketing approach for residential and commercial work, and much more!


ICS HVAC Website: http://icshvac.com/?utm_campaign=gmb

ICS HVAC Fabebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/ICSHVAC/



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Let us show you how we leverage Website Design, SEO, and Google Ads to make it rain with qualified leads! Get in touch with us today! 

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Transcript

Enmanuel Tejada (00:00.894)
so we are.

Awesome.

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Digital Toolbox Podcast. This is a show where we bring on the owners of a lot of industries in the home services space and we have them tell their story, how they got into the business and they also get to tell us some inside tips and advice for younger companies in the trades. Today, our guest is Chris with ICS HVAC here in New Jersey, one of the premier HVAC companies here. They do so much. You guys are about to learn some right now. Chris, go ahead and tell us about yourself, man.

Chris (00:17.526)
And they also didn't tell us on that presentation the price of the new company's grades. Today, our guest is Chris with ICS, who's back with us by the year. He's back on the ICS here so much. I'd like to ask him right now, Chris, go ahead and tell us about your session. Sure. Thank you. Thank you for having me on, first of all. So yeah, Chris is new to key companies, ICS Integrate Comfort Systems. Company's been around for 30 plus years.

Enmanuel Tejada (00:38.008)
Thank you.

Chris (00:45.066)
I got into it through my father who started the company. So at an early age, I was working nights, I shouldn't say nights, they were definitely nights, but weekends and summers in the business. So I picked it up here and there. I've never had the intention of doing it when I was a teenager. I just thought it was, hey, it's like extra money during the weekends and the summers. But then long story short, after I graduated college, I ended up.

going into the business and that was year 2000. So it's been 24 years now of me being in this business. And I learned a lot. I probably have a little bit to share, hopefully, if you ask me the right questions.

Enmanuel Tejada (01:29.017)
Awesome man, so Chris you got started 24 years ago exactly in 2000. So how would you say that things have kind of changed? Now of course your role has changed right from 2000 but more or less the jobs that you guys do how different is it from what you guys were doing in 2000 in the early 2000s?

Chris (01:49.566)
Yeah, so us as a company, we were doing a lot more commercial type work. We've since then added a lot more residential work. That's part of the difference for us. But overall, doing business is way different. I mean, the little thing, I don't know if you heard of the internet, that has drastically changed almost everything, even as a commercial company. Just access to finding.

work to finding leads to finding jobs and vice versa on the commercial side. So, you know, just a lot of commercial contractors, it's all about relationships. It's about knowing general contractors. So back in the year, you know, 2000, a general contractor would probably have in his Rolodex, right? Like three or four at most HVC contractors they would go to for their jobs. Nowadays, you have so many venues.

electronic through internet venues where a GC can just put his project up and you'll have hundreds and hundreds of contractors bidding for jobs. So a lot more competitive. That's definitely a lot harder to actually gain that business. And in the end, you still have to have a relationship. It all boils down to the relationship. The internet's there. It's great to kind of make connections, but it's still about relationships. But that's one of the biggest things. Just a...

Enmanuel Tejada (03:07.488)
Yeah.

Chris (03:16.502)
The internet changed every industry, everything, but it definitely has changed it for us. And same thing with homeowners too. But there's residential homeowners finding companies, right? It was the phone book before or just you asked the neighbor who they used and they didn't get many choices really. And it was very hard for them to probably vet who is a good contractor or not. You got Google ratings now, right? And Yelp and all that good stuff. And then, you know, contracts could just... I mean, homeowners could just sit there.

Enmanuel Tejada (03:27.237)
Exactly.

Enmanuel Tejada (03:37.841)
Exactly.

Chris (03:45.954)
for 10 hours a day, just reading reviews for thousands of, it could drive you crazy, there is an overload. But the information, they can get themselves armed not only with information about contractors, but also information about the service, the product, the research, I can't tell you the amount of times I've sat with homeowners who are extremely knowledgeable.

Enmanuel Tejada (03:47.488)
Everything with news.

Enmanuel Tejada (03:53.688)
Thank you.

Chris (04:09.87)
And you go like, wow, these people know their stuff. They're scary. And again, that's a good thing for everybody. But you have to adapt to it. You have to know how to deal with different things like that.

Enmanuel Tejada (04:13.747)
Absolutely.

Enmanuel Tejada (04:22.58)
That's awesome. I mean, what type of like, knowledge do they come with, right? Like when you're talking to a homeowner, what type of things do you get surprised that they actually know about?

Chris (04:31.254)
Um, a lot of details. I mean, I have, um, you know, I have encounters with, with engineers, unfortunately, just kidding. They'll come out with charts and performance and they did kind of over, over thinks stuff, but you know, simple things like I guarantee you in the year 2000, I've never ran into any homeowner that knew what a load calculation for a house is in terms of HVC, you know, how do you size a system that they just relied on the contractor and the contractor, you know, hopefully did the right job.

Enmanuel Tejada (04:38.623)
Hahaha

Chris (05:00.77)
Who knows if they did or they didn't, right? But right now, homeowners, like, they know. They could go on the internet, they could find out. They know what a manual J calculation is. That gets referenced a lot. They know many different rebates and tax credits and things that are out there in a general sphere of knowledge. And you as a contractor better be prepared to know all this stuff because I definitely encounter homeowners that tell me, hey, like I talked to...

Enmanuel Tejada (05:02.552)
Thank you.

Chris (05:28.354)
you know, contractor A about this, and this, and they were clueless, they're obviously not the contractor for me. So yeah, I mean, almost everything you can think of, you know, and sometimes it's too much. They'll do too much research where they get buried in the numbers and they just get lost in terms of what the objective of their project was.

Enmanuel Tejada (05:50.008)
Man, that's funny. That's good though that they're kind of on with some type of knowledge. And then Chris, how about this? Because I know that this is like something that's impacting all of the trades, right? And it's hiring talent. So now we know that nowadays, youngsters coming out of college, they're like the trades or coming out of high school, even the trades, that's disgusting. Why would I want to go get dirty? Why would I want to go work with my hands? What do you think about that? Is it harder now to hire people inside of the HVAC field specifically or how are things looking?

Chris (06:18.254)
Yeah, 100%. I think all the trades, I can definitely speak that all the trades are struggling with it. The more skilled the trade, the harder it's going to be. I'm going to say, I'm not trying to be biased because I'm an HVAC guy, but HVAC involves thermodynamics and involves a little bit of electric and a little bit of plumbing, a little bit of construction. It involves kind of a lot. So in order to do, and there's different portions of.

of the trade, there's guys to install sheet metal only. But the well-rounded guy who knows how to work on systems, he's got to be smarter. It really isn't just a fallback thing. That's kind of the mistake. Maybe at some point it was when equipment was simpler. But equipment is complicated. It's like we've got

Tesla things happening. Imagine a mechanic from 1950 opening up a Tesla and trying to figure out what's wrong with it. It's kind of on our side too. Equipment's getting more and more complicated, more computerized. You have to have skills. You have to have desire to learn more and continue to learn because it's getting updated so fast. So it's not a fallback career. I think that's the problem.

Enmanuel Tejada (07:10.816)
Yeah.

Chris (07:33.91)
You know, the mentality we put in the whole country that like, hey, try to go to college and then, you know, we kind of see that that's a mistake in the whole country because not everyone, first of all, not everyone's cut out for college, but not every college degree has any, has value. You're gonna be a doctor, you're gonna be an engineer, you're gonna be a lawyer, sure, go to college. You know, no offense, I don't know what you've gone to college or haven't gone to college for, but like, you know, some studies in liberal arts that-

Enmanuel Tejada (07:48.993)
That's very true.

Chris (08:02.134)
They're kind of a waste of time for most young adults, I think. So absolutely it's hard because of just the general culture of what we have about college versus trade school. There's also a poor culture and work ethic, too. You seem like a very young guy. You seem like you have good work ethic. Your generation, unfortunately, doesn't have the reputation for the work ethic.

That's another one. So yeah. Yeah, and it's honestly a real thing. And it's like there's a diamond in the rough here and there of guys that have that work ethic. And generally speaking, they're going to be like first generation people or something like that. Your typical American younger kid just doesn't seem to have it, and it's sad. And a lot of the trades, a lot of what we do, is strictly about just.

Enmanuel Tejada (08:32.156)
Yes, I agree. And I'm one of them, you know, I'm trying to stand out.

Chris (09:00.77)
just humping stuff along, just having a work ethic. That's first and foremost. It's not easy, it's hard. You have to physically strain yourself a lot of times. It's part of what's required for the job. And when you have that along with the ambition to learn and build your technical knowledge, you can become very successful. That's the other part I think that's kind of making its way out into the general sphere is that you've got

plumbers and HVAC guys making between $100,000 and $200,000 if you're good, easy, right? And then you have guys with a marketing degree, sometimes they can't find the job. So, yeah, so, you know, there's a potential here, but it's just like anything else, it's not easy, you know? And it shouldn't be easy, but it's not easy. I've hired guys that seem to have a good head on their shoulders. They're technically savvy too.

Enmanuel Tejada (09:42.004)
Yeah, literally.

Chris (10:00.014)
but they're missing the work ethic, right? It's like, there's just something out there in this culture where it's like, yeah, I mean, I'm not sure if I'm gonna show up to work today on time, or, you know, I just want some days off here and there because like, I'm just, I'm tired. I mean, you're 22 years old. What do you mean you're tired? Just...

Enmanuel Tejada (10:10.316)
Yeah, I can- oh my god.

Chris (10:26.126)
That's good.

Enmanuel Tejada (10:29.823)
Yeah, I

Chris (10:38.188)
Yeah.

Enmanuel Tejada (10:42.52)
comes from hard work. Why the fuck are you being a sly? Why are you being so lazy? Like do something with yourself, man. Yeah. I can't stand that.

Chris (10:46.922)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that's the shame because you go, this guy's got talent or potential for it. You kind of see it, but you can't work with them because they're not cut out for work. They're trying to just find the easiest path they can. They don't like adversity and all that kind of stuff. And every career path, I mean, I don't care what you're doing, if it's HPC or anything, any career path is gonna have adversity in it. You gotta hump along, you gotta put your time in before you start seeing.

Enmanuel Tejada (11:08.086)
Yeah.

Chris (11:14.518)
payback and real success in it. And I think that's, that's what's missing. Nobody wants that. They come out of high school and they wanted to pay me 30 bucks an hour. Cause I heard that that's what you can make here easily. So here I am. I showed up, pay me 30 bucks an hour.

Enmanuel Tejada (11:30.244)
Yeah, man, that's kind of crazy. And you know what, on that same topic, Chris, I mean, I know that you're a father, right? You mentioned that you have a teenage son. How do you kind of instill the principles that you have, right? That those traditional values, how do you instill that into a kid? You know, nowadays, when society is kind of molding them to be software, softer, or act how you feel, how do you deal with that as a parent?

Chris (11:56.726)
trying to figure that out. But I think it's just example. It's like, you know, my wife, same thing. Just we don't sit around on the couch even on our off time. We're busy bodies. We do things. We get the kids involved. I'm always doing, I can't sit down. Like if it's a weekend, I'm going to be doing some house project. I'm going to have my teenage son help me out, drag some things along. And then, yeah, I've seen those instances where they're like, yeah, I carry two things up and down. I'm tired. Can I go? I'm like, no.

Like we got a whole day of doing this. And so I think the best way is just really, I brought them in for work too, just showing things and do that, you know, they're of that age. I think they're gonna copy exactly what they see from their parents and it will come naturally. And you kind of see that, you kind of see that that's what happens, because I don't think you can tell anybody, hey, have good work ethic, right? Like, you know,

Enmanuel Tejada (12:37.269)
Yup.

Enmanuel Tejada (12:51.926)
Yeah.

Chris (12:55.818)
Yeah, I'm sure you saw your parents probably busting their ass somehow and that's why you're doing it.

Enmanuel Tejada (13:02.296)
Exactly. Yeah, I did. I did. And I'm following an example, literally, the exact same thing that you're kind of doing. They led for me as an example. So it's like, I have no choice. Like, if my parents were so hardworking, why the fuck would I be lazy? Why would I? Yeah, that's kind of insane. But

Man, yeah, that was a good conversation right there around that. And Chris, so give us some tips, man. So you are a veteran, right? You guys started doing commercial, you guys expanded to residential later on, which most people, most companies start doing residential and then expand into commercial. So for that young guy that's kind of looking at this podcast, he's got an HVAC company, he has a company in the trades in general.

Chris (13:36.19)
Yeah, yeah, I've heard a lot, yeah.

Enmanuel Tejada (13:45.06)
What advice would you give them if they're only doing residential? Would you recommend to focus on that and expand that or should they start looking into commercial bids? What do you think?

Chris (13:54.594)
Number one, I think it has to do with their ultimate goal, vision or desire, right? That is, you know, that is what has to happen. Hold on a second here.

Chris (14:10.718)
Yeah, sorry about that. Yeah, I mean, so they're kind of two different things. You have to have a vision for you as the company. So some guys that, before they started a business, and they spent their career only doing residential, like commercial may be a scary thing to them. They probably shouldn't touch it. But if they came from a commercial world, they may only want to stay in the commercial world. So you have to have a vision. Residential customers will be easier to gain. Word of mouth, go around. It's way easier to gain residential customers.

Enmanuel Tejada (14:12.033)
No.

Chris (14:40.734)
Friends of friends, family, this, that spread the word, local township page, you know, Facebook pages, things like that. You could kind of do it as a one-man operation. Commercial is going to be a little bit tougher. Commercial, you have to have some kind of established relationships or know people. Like, you know, you're going to do an HVC trade. You're essentially a subcontractor. You have to know a general contractor, somebody who's got work. You have a potential relationship with them. And, you know, you just want to...

kind of piggyback along with them and get work from them. And that's how you build up. And you find one GC, you find another GC, you get bigger and things like that. But you should never do any of those portions of the work if you're not passionate about which one. So we do both, right? And they both have pros and cons. With residential, you have to deal with people.

Enmanuel Tejada (15:30.04)
Mmm.

Chris (15:38.47)
That's the worst part about it. Everybody will tell you, the work is way easier, the people are way harder. A commercial is the flip side. The work is more complicated, more involved, but you don't really have to do, you're dealing with B2B, you're dealing with professionals, right? For the most part, you're dealing with other professional people, you're not dealing with anybody that's emotional in the house. A lot of aspects, but that kind of boils it.

boils it down to essentially what it is.

Enmanuel Tejada (16:09.256)
Man, that's a good take on it there. Yeah, your commercial, it's much more complicated, but you're not dealing with people, with humans. That's funny. And then, Crystal, then, on that same tape, then, what made you guys wanna kinda expand into residential? Cause you guys had the commercial going. I would imagine it's kind of like, you guys wanted to maximize the, or leverage that income from the residential work as well.

Chris (16:17.228)
Yeah.

Chris (16:38.814)
Yeah, yeah, so diversification of revenue streams is definitely one of them. We saw an opportunity to kind of do it. There's different value as far as our end of the home services business of doing residential work than commercial work. We saw a couple of things happening here and there as well. So just so I backtracked, the majority of our work New York City area.

Now we worked outside of New York City, but like 90% of our revenue is New York City. Commercial jobs. And then it kind of got into high-end residential jobs. And high-end residential is essentially like the millionaire or billionaire who's got the penthouse apartments and brownstones of the city. Most people call that even commercial because it kind of works like a commercial, even though you're working for a residence. But.

Enmanuel Tejada (17:10.164)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (17:28.406)
You know, we were asked all the time to do the GC owners, as a daughter-in-law, house, residential, and the network of people here and there. So we were doing the residential work. We just never marketed to it. So at some point in time, we're saying, listen, we're doing it anyway. There's more potential for work. I think it's also easier to scale as a business doing residential work.

Enmanuel Tejada (17:37.429)
Wow.

Chris (17:54.806)
there's less risk in residential. You're doing a lot more smaller projects, right? Commercial projects tie you down. You get a $1 million commercial project, you're gonna be tied down with your assets for some time. If something goes south, right, there's way more risk. And also, like, you can't take on way more work because there's schedules, there's things. With residential, it's easier to just steadily just add on, add on, add on, add on, add on, and scale at a good rate.

Enmanuel Tejada (18:19.764)
Yep.

Chris (18:24.202)
because you're gaining a bunch of smaller projects. So that's one reason, one of many reasons we did that.

Enmanuel Tejada (18:31.34)
Wow, yeah, that's good too. Yeah, you made a great point right there that residential, you're kind of doing similar jobs over and over, right? So you can have SOPs, you can have, you guys will be doing the same work. And now that I just mentioned that word, SOPs, how do you guys, do you guys have SOPs? Do you guys, or how repeatable are you guys? How do the guys follow them? How does that look?

Chris (18:46.463)
Absolutely, yeah.

Chris (18:51.046)
Yeah, so this, you know what, this kind of goes back to your original question about the talent, right? So the one thing I didn't actually introduce as part of this conversation, it is, is that, you know, I saw a decline in talent, right? So as the commercial work gets a little bit more complicated, this controls just... And the talent in the field gets less talented, right? It started to...

Enmanuel Tejada (19:12.972)
Hehehe

Chris (19:16.054)
have to funnel through all my smart people in the office. And I hate to use that word, but I'm kind of using it. Like the project managers and all that knew how to do things, but everything had to go through it. So the funnel, any time you funnel things in a business, it slows down. So that's another reason why we said, let's get more repeatable work that's easier. You don't need as much of a talented person. And not to say that they don't have talent, just they're just just.

There's easier skills, more repeatable over and over and over versus the commercial world sees a lot more different custom scenarios. It's like, this is way different than that, than this and that. It's like, it could get very, very complicated. Residential is always kind of just, yeah, I got a cookie cutter thing and I'm making, you know, you know, like little snowman shaped cookie cutters. So yeah, so there's a lot of stuff that's repeatable, right? So that's the nice part. So you're...

Enmanuel Tejada (20:06.336)
Hahaha

Chris (20:14.346)
Your operations that you have mapped out, they can get a lot more granular, and we can start kind of fine tuning all of them a lot better. And then you can start to hold people accountable more for following the process. It's a lot easier to call them accountable as well. But you absolutely have to have SOPs to be successful. Otherwise it's just a mess.

Or otherwise, you're a small time business where everything's going, again, funneling through you. So that you'll never scale if everything's funneling through you.

Enmanuel Tejada (20:47.684)
Yeah, yeah. And can you imagine doing all the little paperwork or doing things like that because they were missed that would hinder your time because you could be focusing on higher profitable higher profit opportunities within the business, right?

Chris (21:00.438)
Yeah, and I guarantee you, home services space, you're probably dealing with 90% of business owners who that's the way they stay. They can't get past that. They can't get past everything funneling through them. And it's a very difficult thing. You have to take a leap of faith. Essentially, when you start making hires, you're gonna have pitfalls, you're gonna have mistakes, but what you gotta do is kind of quickly learn to get past them and, you know, A, hire right people.

Enmanuel Tejada (21:18.232)
Thank you.

Chris (21:30.578)
and be, hold everybody accountable and fine tune all of those operations, you know, the way you have the operations laid out and all the procedures.

Enmanuel Tejada (21:42.772)
Yeah, couldn't agree more. Yeah, because the foundation is not stable and buildings kind of crumble. Man, and you know what? How did you guys market yourselves, right? Because you were commercial and then you started doing residential. What were some of the aspects that you guys, or some of the values that you guys even upheld to attain those clients, right? Because of course you guys were doing the general contractors' houses and the personal stuff, but people that don't know you guys, how did they come to know you?

Chris (22:13.182)
Yeah, so back in the more commercial days, there was no sort of outside marketing for us. And I mentioned to you that's one of those things I kind of a little bit regret. We should have jumped on the marketing and the branding bandwagon a lot sooner, even as commercial contractors. But it was relationship-based, all that stuff. So it was all about keeping in front of

Enmanuel Tejada (22:17.56)
Okay.

Chris (22:39.222)
our customers when we had lots of customers that, or customers that gave us lots of business that were very important to us. It'd be things like going out to lunch, some gifts and ball games and things of that sort. That's part of marketing, that's part of the networking.

thing that you're doing, you're keeping in front of mind, you're always sort of there, even if there's no job coming from a certain general contractor or so. You're always keeping in touch. And I call that marketing, because that's essentially you're trying to sell your business. You're trying to sell services for your business. But yeah, when you transition to the residential world, you got to, you know.

You can't concentrate on one client who's going to give you $5,000 worth of work. You got to concentrate on 5,000 clients who are going to give you, you know, $5 million worth of work, whatever that is. Um, so, so yeah, so, you know, marketing has to be like just everywhere. And we were new. We were new to, um, to marketing at some point when we started marketing, we started hiring people and we didn't know.

Enmanuel Tejada (23:26.322)
Right.

Chris (23:50.774)
We didn't know if it was good, if it was bad in the beginning. So I personally had to learn the ROIs on each thing we do. And you start to learn who is a good marketing person, who's not. So that's a learning curve to you as well. Because just like anybody else, I tell my clients, you can't hire the cheapest HVAC guy, because you're going to get exactly what you deserve. I'm sure in the marketing world, it's the same. And I know it's the same. It really is. It's the same.

Enmanuel Tejada (24:14.38)
Okay.

Enmanuel Tejada (24:20.489)
All across the board, yeah.

Chris (24:21.839)
all across the board. So yeah, you could find somebody that does cheap marketing. What's it doing for you, right? But in the end, I'm going to say that doing a little bit of everything is really what you have to do. You have to do the Google, you have to do the Facebook, and you do different things on each platform depending on what makes sense. For us, Facebook brings us new...

is wonderful at bringing us new leads for people that want new AC systems, replaced or brand new to the house. Google is great at bringing us people that want service work. Both are not good at the other. Google's not great for a new system. I mean, you get leads from it, but really, people click on Facebook ads because they see brand new systems, some kind of offer, some kind of a thing, blah, blah. When people want service and their AC or heating is down, they go to Google.

Right? They Google like.

Enmanuel Tejada (25:17.896)
And that makes perfect sense from a digital marketing point standpoint, right? Because if somebody's AC is not working, first thing they're going to do is going to go on Google and, you know, my AC is not working or HVAC company near me, right? Whereas opposed on Facebook, people kind of treat that almost like a billboard, right? You're not necessarily going to go on Facebook and type in, you know, HVAC company near me. You would do that on Google. So that does make sense. And so how do you guys do that? Like, are you guys advertising on Facebook?

you guys just organically posting some of the work, some of the technicians, and complete a project.

Chris (25:50.958)
Both. Yeah, both. Both. Yeah, so for branding things, we're putting everything out there. For branding-wise, we're trying to be active on that stuff. We're putting organic posts and interesting things. Sometimes these organic posts do nothing, but sometimes they get some engagement. It depends. It's got to be right timing, right picture, right topic. But that stuff doesn't cost you much. That stuff to anybody, even if you're a single person company.

Enmanuel Tejada (26:12.12)
I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

Chris (26:19.282)
Take a couple of pictures of the work, just one, two, three. Put one up a day. Describe it. Put the right keywords in there, I guess, whatever it is. And that just builds up your branding. And the other one is, of course, direct advertising for certain things, certain systems, where you get people to fill out forms and they become leads.

Enmanuel Tejada (26:41.716)
Gotcha, gotcha, for sure. And how do you filter through those leads, right? Like how do you, because that's a big topic, right? It's not just about getting people to call you guys or getting people to fill the forms, but how do you filter the right customer? Is it something that you guys do through the marketing or you guys do it internally?

Chris (26:57.103)
Yeah, so most, that's funny you say that because every marketing person will tell you there's no such thing as a bad lead, right? Which is 100% not true. So yeah, I mean, that's a great question because you have to decide again what kind of company are you? We're a premier company, right? We're not competing against the guy working out of his truck and advertising for the cheapest thing he can advertise for. We will never compete with that guy. That's not our...

Enmanuel Tejada (27:04.025)
Hahaha

Enmanuel Tejada (27:22.697)
Mm.

Chris (27:25.13)
our ballpark that we play in. So if we start advertising really cheap things, guess what we're gonna attract, right? We're gonna, very cheap customers. So that's part of it. So there is a marketing aspect to it. But even then, people go on the internet, people click on things, fill out forms, and they're not really interested. They just wanna fill out forms and be a-holes, right? Or whatever. I mean, I gotta show you some of the messages we get from people who just, you know.

Enmanuel Tejada (27:31.744)
very cheap customers.

Chris (27:50.506)
Some of them are angry that your ad came up on their feed. And they're like, why is this popping up on here? So there's a term that I know you probably know. It's called speed to lead. It's basically when you get a lead, you've got to be fast on replying to them. You don't reply seven days from now. Somebody fills out a form. It goes into an automated system when it starts engaging with them. It starts asking.

Enmanuel Tejada (27:51.28)
man.

Enmanuel Tejada (27:56.899)
Ha ha ha!

Enmanuel Tejada (28:03.872)
Mm-hmm.

Enmanuel Tejada (28:14.909)
Exactly, the nurture, the lead, yeah.

Chris (28:16.842)
Yeah, and it starts asking them some questions and back and forth. And through that nurturing thing, initially you find out sometimes people fill out a form and never answer you. They just fill out a form. They just, they don't want to be contacted, right? Sometimes they fill out a form, they never answer you. And on day 368, after they fill out the form, they go, oh, okay, I'm ready to discuss. Right? That happens. Right? And sometimes through the questions you figure out, you know,

Enmanuel Tejada (28:39.557)
Hahaha

Chris (28:46.866)
I don't know, because the Facebook form did an automatic fill or something. They're not even in your state, you know, or what they're looking for you don't do. So there's a good amount of filtering that you just kind of threw it through. We just go high level with the texting because you can't have a person contact these people. That's not.

Enmanuel Tejada (29:02.316)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (29:06.994)
And especially if you're a smaller company, the smaller companies I think are sometimes scared of the marketing because they think like, I'm gonna have to call everybody back and like, oh, I got a couple of bad leads and like, this is wasting my time. Like, yeah, the majority of the people filling out your ads are gonna be like non-contactable. So you have to have a system that nurtures them and then gets through somebody who's like interested. You wanna lead them to a phone call. That's essentially what you wanna do.

Enmanuel Tejada (29:33.82)
Exactly, exactly.

Chris (29:36.03)
And then, yeah, and then contact them, have a conversation, and then, yeah, there's a series of questions, a series of what questions we asked and what questions they give, which will filter them. Are they a good client for us? Are they not?

Enmanuel Tejada (29:49.308)
Man, yeah, that's great. That's some great advice there. Yeah, cause I do notice that too. A lot of smaller companies are like, oh, but what if I try it and it doesn't work? What if you try it and it does work, right? That could be the difference between you staying and working out of your truck and you hiring somebody else and you guys can expand. I'm curious actually, Chris, because you mentioned you guys use high level for that. So how do you guys nurture those leads? Like what's your sequence like? Is it how automated are you guys to increase the speed to lead, right?

Chris (30:19.626)
Yeah, it's all done through the various workflows that go higher level. So depending on where it's coming from, is it coming from a Facebook where they click the new system? Is it coming from Google My Business? So there'll be different campaigns for that. And essentially, yes, essentially it's all, it's not even AI, it's kind of pre-filled stuff, but you can definitely incorporate AI. We had a system before where we kind of used a little bit of AI, but I'm not sure it was worth it for us because it wasn't really doing anything great.

Enmanuel Tejada (30:48.632)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (30:50.046)
Maybe AI would be better now. You know, I'm paying attention to that whole AI thing, but I'm not incorporating it quite yet. But yeah, but it starts to engage people right away. Because you've got to remember, sometimes people fill out stuff in the middle of the night, they're probably drunk or high or who the hell knows. And then if you get back to them four days later, they're like, who is this? What ad did I fill out? So you kind of right away just want to get to them.

Enmanuel Tejada (30:53.016)
Thanks for watching!

Enmanuel Tejada (31:14.056)
Yep.

Chris (31:19.8)
I mean, so does that answer your question?

Enmanuel Tejada (31:21.892)
It does. Yeah, it does. And I'm glad that you guys are doing it with an automated system, right? Instead of manually having a reply to every email. Do you guys ever find that you guys get beat by competitors as far as like, you know, somebody's having an issue with a boiler, they need a new boiler at home, for example.

Do they and then you reply to them and then you guys are kind of losing the job because you took too long to reply or that doesn't happen at all because you guys are so systemized with go high level.

Chris (31:51.498)
No, so yeah, the speed to lead doesn't happen for us because we get to them right away. I mean, but do we get beat by competitors? Yeah, all the time, right? Of course. Yeah, I mean, but no, but it's never really because we took too long, anything of that sort. Sometimes there may be a ball drop that happens. I mean, you'll have perhaps a salesperson that goes out and he's doing 75 things in a week and somehow he didn't get back to one customer about something he was supposed to look up and all that.

slips through a crack and the customer, you know, just never went with us, cause we never got back to them, right? I mean, that's, but as far as the marketing and the communication, because we're automated, no, we don't, we don't get that.

Enmanuel Tejada (32:28.76)
Mm-hmm.

Enmanuel Tejada (32:32.164)
Gotcha, gotcha. And you mentioned that they're actually, you mentioned the term salesperson, right? So I know that a lot of, in a lot of home and home service industries, such as roofing, such as landscaping, there are salesmen, right? There are salespeople that are selling the service, right? Is that the case for HVAC too or not?

Chris (32:53.326)
Unfortunately, yes. So yeah, I mean, and don't get me wrong. You need sales people, right, for everything. You need sales people. It's to what extent do you need sales people? So if I'm selling these cups, I could have a guy that just is a trained salesperson, needs to know three, four things about cups and the company, how they're manufactured, and bam, he can sell cups, right? There's no, when you're selling complicated systems,

Enmanuel Tejada (33:03.552)
Yep.

Enmanuel Tejada (33:19.954)
right.

Chris (33:23.918)
Like HVAC systems in a home are not a product. They have to get sized, right? There's different scenarios. It's a complicated thing, right? So there's companies that have salespeople and they're wonderful, amazing salespeople. They get sales, but they don't know HVAC that well. They actually, if you read a lot of customer reviews where they have bad experiences, it's probably caused by that.

But yeah, we have a huge problem in our industry. The mega companies, that's exactly what they're doing. Very polished salespeople, poorly educated on HVAC. That's another problem that we have in the industry. Because guess what? I mean, money is fantastic. So I'd rather have the qualified salesperson making me lots and lots of money if he makes mistakes. Well, we'll cover it on the back end kind of thing.

So for us, we don't want to do that. We come from a commercial background anyway. So for us, we call them project advisors. So it's somebody that's got the knowledge to properly design systems, to properly handle everything HVC related, and has enough skills to be a salesperson, right? So I think that's the ultimate good mix. But every trade, every industry is gonna have their version of it. Not to disparage like carpet people, but carpet you have to be able to measure, you have to know what kind of carpet.

Enmanuel Tejada (34:36.736)
No.

Chris (34:47.438)
Right? It's you're picking out a product. If you're selling curtains or something, you know, there's different levels to it. But, you know, not to say HVAC is rocket science and all that stuff, but out of all the trades, I said that in the beginning, it is the most complicated trade. It does require a certain level of knowledge that is beyond skin deep. And you can't have like a little cheat sheet going, I'm gonna give you product A, product B, product C, because again, it's a system. It's not a product.

Enmanuel Tejada (34:53.602)
Good.

Enmanuel Tejada (35:16.796)
Right. Everything is different. And you mentioned there, you mentioned there, ooh, I wonder if we have an argument there. I wonder what people would think. Because you mentioned HVAC is the most difficult trade. Is that kind of like a, what's the, I wonder if it's like, you know, is that kind of same argument as like, what's the most difficult sport? Is it baseball? Or is it something else?

Chris (35:28.619)
I'm sure somebody will argue with that.

Chris (35:37.43)
You know what? Growing up, I'm not a baseball fan. Growing up basketball and football, I always thought baseball was boring. I kind of still do. But I never gave it the respect up until, you were talking about my teenage son, right? Up until my teenage son, he plays football too. But he's doing baseball. He's in the baseball team now. And I learned by taking him to the baseball coaches that paying attention, it does require the most amount of skill.

Enmanuel Tejada (35:46.848)
Thanks for watching!

Chris (36:03.474)
It's, you know, basketball, you got to be tall, lanky, athletic guy, right? That, that, that's, you know, football, big, strong, fast guys kind of thing. In baseball, you can have a short fat guy. You could have a tall skinny guy. You can have, doesn't matter. It's about the skill. You got to have the skill. The, and there's tremendous skill in throwing and there's tremendous skill in being able to hit. I mean, that's why the best guys only hit a third of, you know, of.

Enmanuel Tejada (36:08.085)
Yep, good job.

Enmanuel Tejada (36:21.112)
Exactly. You can be as tall as you want.

Enmanuel Tejada (36:30.064)
Yeah, right? Yeah, yeah, somebody that's hitting 300. That's, that's very good.

Chris (36:34.574)
That's amazing. Yeah, so now when I'm older, I kind of learned a little bit, baseball requires a little skill. Ha ha ha.

Enmanuel Tejada (36:43.729)
The most difficult sport. They always said, and I played baseball, right? I was a pitcher, but I have to admit hitting a round ball with a round bat is the most difficult thing to do in sports. It is. I wonder what the people will say though. I wonder because some people probably would say, oh no, being an electrician is more difficult than being a, you know, being an HVAC. What do you think about that? Or plumbing?

Chris (37:05.974)
Um, listen, so there's depends what you're doing and there's, there's different aspects, there's building automation systems and all that, which kind of falls sometimes under, under HVAC, but the typical HVAC guy has to know, has to do a little bit of plumbing work that's involved in our work. We have to do a little bit of electrical work controls wise too. So it's like low voltage, high voltage stuff we deal with. So we deal with the same stuff electricians do and more. So that's why I say that it is, it requires a little bit more.

Enmanuel Tejada (37:14.488)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (37:33.03)
knowledge of kind of a little bit of everything. So I would guarantee that you're a typical DIYer at home. If he's doing electrical work, plumbing work and all this other work, he's probably an HVAC guy. Because they know a little bit about all that stuff. I mean, I have friends in the business and they're plumbers and they don't touch the electric. They're scared of it. They don't know anything. An HVAC guy touches electric all the time.

Enmanuel Tejada (37:46.727)
Oh man.

Enmanuel Tejada (38:01.076)
Wow. Yeah, that's, that is true. I love the fact that you guys kind of do it all though. That's very, very interesting right there too. But maybe it's the reason too that you guys are so advanced, right? Because if from what I've seen and from what other people in the, in that do marketing for the trades, especially digital marketing, we find that like roofing companies, for example, or roofing brands, they are very outdated, right? Compared like their systems are outdated. Nobody knows who manages the roof.

Whereas somebody like an HVAC company, you guys are very automated. Like you mentioned you're using high level and I've heard a lot of other HVAC companies that are using a bunch of systems so that you guys are systemizing more. You know, you guys leave maybe a sticker so you know who manages a specific system, right? A roof, most people don't know who changed your roof, right? So, yeah.

Chris (38:45.654)
Yeah, they don't remember. The day after they paid them, they probably don't even. Yeah, no, that's a tough. And by the way, how often do you need a roofer? Two, that's the other part of it. They're constantly have to search just for new work. I mean, do you retain a relationship with your roofer? You definitely retain a relationship with an HVAC guy, plumber, probably not as much as an electrician only when there's problems. But plumber and HVAC, so I think it's that. It's HVAC does so much and they offer so many different levels of services

Enmanuel Tejada (38:57.173)
Yes.

Chris (39:15.362)
they just, the industry learned just to be a little bit more advanced because they do a little bit everything from obviously heating air conditioning to indoor air quality and just many other things. So yeah, I mean, and that's why it's, it's not boring too. So I would, you know, we talked about me being in this field and, you know, I think when we talked early on, it's like,

what point in time did I learn to appreciate it or at least enjoy it and things like that. And I think that keeps you kind of on your game, just the level of complexity, learning things. And I can't imagine if I had to have a business of just assembling cardboard boxes or something and technology hasn't changed in 100 years of cardboard boxes. Well, maybe it has. I don't even know. But that would be pretty boring to me.

Enmanuel Tejada (40:08.736)
Man, yeah, yeah. And you know what, Chris, this is kind of a question here. It's not as related to home services, but just a question in life values in general. What do you think about, because I know a couple of people, I know one guy that's...

He always, his message is that he doesn't give a fuck about where the money comes from as long as the money comes, right? So he's like, his argument is like, do you think that the best, that the biggest concrete company in China gives a fuck about the concrete that they make? You think he's sleeping with the concrete in the bed at night? All he cares about is the paycheck. What do you think about those guys? What's your take on that?

Chris (40:42.334)
Ah, no, that's definitely not our value. And no, I'm not a fan. And listen, maybe there is. Again, it goes back to your vision, right? If you wanna be a giant ass company and scale like crazy, then yeah, you just want revenue. You don't care where it comes from. Whatever is easiest, whatever is best, whatever is more scalable. And there's HVAC companies that do that. They just, they're out there for the masses. They just, they don't really

care they have this those are the ones that have the sales people right the pure sales people they don't care how it's done when it's you know they just want that paycheck and they want to rinse and repeat and process that cookie cutter stuff so no that's not our company we filter

our client, right? There's a specific avatar we're looking for a client. There's a specific thing we do. We have a little bit of a better value proposition towards HVAC installation than some other companies. I may not even have a value proposition. I'm just installing it. If you don't think as an HVAC company, if you yourself don't have the belief, the culture, the vision that HVAC is the most important thing in a house,

then you're never going to convey that to a customer. And you're never going to sell yourself as that. You're going to just be out there for a paycheck, whatever comes next. We believe that there's a specific client that is going to actually our motto is reducing cost, increasing comfort. And that has to do with the fact that we install mostly higher efficiency systems. They do two things. The number one, higher efficiency is going to reduce operating costs. Number two.

just not getting into the weeds of technical things. But the higher efficiency systems happen to be valuable speed. They actually make it more comfortable in the house for many reasons. And that's something that we kind of translate to a customer. And when a customer is really receptive, they like that. They're willing to pay more money for a system like that amongst not just even the product, but improving other things that have to do with the duct work and things like that.

Chris (42:51.606)
to get a more comfortable house that uses less electricity. And then there's clients who don't give a fuck about it. So that's not our client. That's not our client. Because it's one of those things, too. Like you mentioned the standard operating procedures. So if we teach our guys in the field, this is how we do things. And it takes extra time. It's things that have to do with quality. It's details. That's adding cost to the project.

Enmanuel Tejada (42:57.944)
I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

Chris (43:20.786)
you're adding it for a reason because you're turning out a better result. So then you can't cater to that low guy because you're not going to change your standard operating procedure. You can't go, all right, guys, on this project, just do a shitty job. Don't worry about the holes in the ductwork. Don't patch them, don't do anything. Just be in and out of it. That doesn't work. So you have to have a vision. You have to have a clear objective of how you do things. But that's why in the marketplace, you have Walmart and you have Saks Fifth Avenue, right? Two different clients go into those places.

Enmanuel Tejada (43:31.222)
Yeah.

Enmanuel Tejada (43:48.156)
Yeah, yeah. That's a great analogy. That's why you have different that that's why that's why there's different brands of cars, right? Once have better value than others. That's a great question. That's a great analogy. And Chris, quick question here. One last one of the last ones, you guys I know you probably have to run. I know that you sell your HVAC equipment on your website as well.

Do clients kind of get confused with or not confused, but how often do you guys keep that stuff in stock? Right? Like do you guys have all of that in house that you ship out or do you guys just install it as well?

Chris (44:25.066)
No, no, so that's what you're referring to is sort of getting a pricing quote for having its equipment replaced. And that again has to do with finding the right customers. There's customers who will waste your time on the phone. They're just calling around 100 places looking for cheapest prices. Like, and most people, you can't give a price, you know, you could give general budgets and things like that. So that's meant to be like, hey, go on our website, play around with the system we have on our website, pick out what you're looking for.

Enmanuel Tejada (44:52.792)
Thanks for watching!

Chris (44:54.958)
pretty close to most common scenario installation costs. And that helps to filter our clients. That's what it's there for. So it's not, we're not selling the product. We're just kind of pre-quoting what, you know, based on the house size and other things you input on the website. And it helps to narrow down who is our client, who isn't our client. But to answer the second part, contractors generally don't keep equipment stocked.

I mean, if I have lots of spare millions and millions of dollars and can do the warehousing, I would. Do we keep a decent amount in stock for certain things? Absolutely. As much as my 30,000 square foot facility can handle. But the majority is you have a relationship with supply houses. So if Manny, if your AC goes out today and we say, hey, we're going to get you a new AC, I have supply houses that will get that AC for me early tomorrow morning with a phone

Enmanuel Tejada (45:50.712)
Wow, that's impressive.

Chris (45:52.146)
And it's their job to stock and distribute it. So, you know, that's why you stick to certain brands you have a relationship with. They're the ones who take on the, you know, they have, you know, $400 million of stock. It's a different business than what we do. Plus, we do so many different things. It's like, which unit do you stock now? Like I'd have a warehouse full of stuff I probably can't sell in a year.

Enmanuel Tejada (46:08.969)
Man, that's...

Enmanuel Tejada (46:18.4)
That's true, yeah, or maybe even a different season, right? I would imagine that you're not selling as many boilers in the summer as you are selling ACs.

Chris (46:25.711)
Right, right. You're not going to get that opportunity to sell them until it gets cold again.

Enmanuel Tejada (46:29.828)
Exactly. Yeah. Um, man, that's actually great. And I might even take that tip from you for my own business, right? Because I do get some clients that they, all they want to know is the price, but maybe if I had the price on the website, they would know right away. And if they're not, you know, if they're like, Oh, that's so expensive, they're not going to waste my time or call me. So it kind of gets rid of the tie kickers for you, right?

Chris (46:53.758)
Yeah, yeah. And then as long as you can establish some kind of pricing that is going to be, that works. Sometimes you ask auto repair place, how much to fix my car? I'm like, we don't even know what's wrong with your car. So the same thing happens in our business. Like, hey, how much to, we can tell you how much to come out to diagnose. And then people want to know, well, how much is it going to cost to fix it? I'm like, Jesus Christ, we got to get there and figure out what's wrong first.

Enmanuel Tejada (47:21.612)
That's true.

Chris (47:22.27)
But you know what, that conversation usually ends up being a pretty, what I'm calling, called bad client because they're so focused on the price. It's like they don't care about fixing their system. They're like, how much is it going to cost me? And a lot of times we're like, you know, technician would get there. They'll tell them, you know, this and this is wrong. It's going to be 300 something dollars. They go, oh no, I'm not going to do that. Yeah. But, but yeah, anything that's more transparent and more upfront is good for you. It's good for the customer.

Enmanuel Tejada (47:35.308)
Yeah.

Enmanuel Tejada (47:42.888)
Yeah, they're going to complain no matter what about the price.

Chris (47:53.495)
There's tire kickers in our society. There definitely is. There's people I've seen, I walked into dollar stores to pick something up. I don't shop there all the time, just you know. And I've literally seen a lady, I was in this kind of a story, I told my friends that it was just funny because I'm standing next to her. She picks up an item at the dollar store. And I don't know what they go up to, two, three dollars, I don't know, those items. She puts it in, she goes, this is too expensive. She puts it in like.

I'm like, what the hell could that have been? Where she puts it down and she talks to herself and goes, this is too expensive. Yeah, so I mean, listen, if she's not good enough for the dollar store, she's not walking to Saks Fifth Avenue.

Enmanuel Tejada (48:32.829)
That is so true. Man, Chris, it's been a pleasure having you on. Do you have some last closing thoughts? Go ahead and, first I want you to go ahead and shout yourself out too as well. How can people get in contact with you if they need your service? I don't know if you do any mentorship, but shout out anything that you wish out.

Chris (48:49.13)
Yeah, sure. So our company, we're located in North Jersey. We handle all of New Jersey and New York City. So website is icshvac.com. Phone number 833 ICSHVAC. And we do residential commercial, kind of what we talked about. I mean, listen, so you're a marketing guy, right? So I mean, I think I'm going to add value here by talking about marketing. I mentioned this. It's that when you have.

the smaller contractor who may not have the revenue, the cashflow for marketing and he doesn't see like value in it, you're wrong. Find a way to start marketing. It's an investment that takes maybe a while to pay back. Just because you pay a marketing guy $1,000 today doesn't mean you're gonna get $1,000 of work tomorrow. It's an investment, you have to figure it out, but start doing it. Same thing for the commercial guys that

work purely based on relationships and they think they don't need any kind of branding. You'll thank me later. It will help you. No matter what, it will help you. Even it will help you find more relationships with other commercial entities. So whatever it is, every business should have some kind of form of marketing. And I know the home services, the contractors, the small guys are probably guilty of not doing a lot of it besides just having maybe even like a generic webpage. And it's way more than I mean, obviously,

you can tell your own audience that it's way more than just having a web page.

Enmanuel Tejada (50:21.348)
1000% and it to go with that. Yeah, like you mentioned some people that do only commercial or they focus mostly on those jobs They think that they don't need a website They think they just need to go and shake Chris's hand But in reality, what if Chris wants to do some research into that company right into that business and he looks at their website Maybe it's ugly. It's not put together, but if you have something professional, they're gonna be like, okay This guy's a professional look at his website and look at look at his track record and those things go a long way So I definitely agree with you

Chris (50:50.606)
Absolutely.

Enmanuel Tejada (50:51.756)
Awesome. Chris, thank you so much for being a guest on our show. If there's anything that we can ever do for you, let us know. Audience, you guys that are listening in, if you guys need any HVAC, anything like that, Chris is your guy. I see us here in New Jersey. Chris, do you also serve New York? New York City as well, guys. There we have it. Chris, you've been an amazing guest. I really appreciate your time over there. Have a great rest of your day.

Chris (51:06.587)
New York City is... yep.

Chris (51:14.168)
Thank you, Manny

Chris (51:20.49)
Yeah.