Today's fireside chat with Chas Becker isn't just a discussion on the nuts and bolts of Brody HVAC—it's a window into the soul of a man who's navigated a fascinating journey from coding to patrolling the streets, and even to the pulpit, before anchoring his dreams in the realm of heating and air. Warmly gathered around the microphone, we uncover the layers that compose Chas, the family man whose son's namesake is etched into every business endeavor, symbolizing a promise of integrity and exceptional service within an industry often clouded with skepticism.
Sink into Chas's tales of dedication as we traverse the landscape of HVAC myths and truths with an honesty as refreshing as a cool breeze during a scorching summer day. It's a conversation that will reshape your understanding of customer care, as Chas details how Brody HVAC's core values of quality workmanship and trust-building eclipse the fleeting allure of quick profits. These are the principles that engrave Brody HVAC's reputation in the community they serve—a legacy built on the bedrock of family values and a commitment to doing right by every customer who entrusts them with their comfort.
Today's fireside chat with Chas Becker isn't just a discussion on the nuts and bolts of Brody HVAC—it's a window into the soul of a man who's navigated a fascinating journey from coding to patrolling the streets, and even to the pulpit, before anchoring his dreams in the realm of heating and air. Warmly gathered around the microphone, we uncover the layers that compose Chas, the family man whose son's namesake is etched into every business endeavor, symbolizing a promise of integrity and exceptional service within an industry often clouded with skepticism.
Sink into Chas's tales of dedication as we traverse the landscape of HVAC myths and truths with an honesty as refreshing as a cool breeze during a scorching summer day. It's a conversation that will reshape your understanding of customer care, as Chas details how Brody HVAC's core values of quality workmanship and trust-building eclipse the fleeting allure of quick profits. These are the principles that engrave Brody HVAC's reputation in the community they serve—a legacy built on the bedrock of family values and a commitment to doing right by every customer who entrusts them with their comfort.
Speaker 1:
This is the Good Neighbor podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Stacey Polar.
Speaker 2:
Hey everybody, I'm excited to be chatting today with Chas Becker. He is the owner of Brody HVAC. Welcome, Chas.
Speaker 3:
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever we are, Wherever we are right, we're excited to chat.
Speaker 2:
So maybe just start off by telling us a little bit about your business.
Speaker 3:
Hey, great Thanks for having me, Stacey. I'm really honored to be a part of this and I'm excited to be on your show today. So thanks for your time. I appreciate that. Brody HVAC is a company that is dedicated to integrity and quality. I know that there's a lot of businesses that use those words and cliche, but we use those as cornerstones and they're really integral in how we approach our business and how we go out providing a service to folks in a way that's quite a bit different than what people are experiencing as their experience with other HVAC contractors at this point.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah. And where'd you get the name Brody HVAC from?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, it's an interesting story. So Brody is actually my 10-year-old son. Oh wow.
Speaker 3:
So when I started this business back in 2020, he was six and I sat him on the couch and I asked him. He says, daddy, has this really crazy idea about starting an HVAC company and I want to name it after you and I want you to know what that means for you, that we're going to have you in videos and we're going to talk about you all the time and there's going to be trucks with your name plastered all over the side of it. And I asked him his permission at six years old if that would be okay, and he gave it to me and I'm blessed that he did. But I really named it after him because I mean, at the end of the day, I mean I'm 48 years old at this point and, quite honestly, I've lived a few years and done a few things and I'm not quite so much interested in what there's not someone particularly likes me per se, so if my name was on the side of the truck, I wouldn't have near the level of accountability that I do for a 10-year-old.
Speaker 3:
That really doesn't have much say of what's happening on the sake of his name and when he turns 18 and gets into the work world, you know two things. One of two things is going to happen. It's either going to be hey, you're that, brody? Or it's going to be hey, you're that, brody. And as his dad and someone who's you know particularly caring of my son and those that know me know how much of a family man I really am, you know I really want to set him up to succeed, whether it's in this business or any other business that he chooses. But I don't want his name to be tarnished for the activities in which that occurred while he wasn't in control of him.
Speaker 2:
Right, right. That's where that integrity comes into play, for sure.
Speaker 3:
Absolutely.
Speaker 2:
Talk a little bit about your journey. Have you always been in the heating and air conditioning business, or did you transition into this field from something else?
Speaker 3:
So it's an interesting story. I've done a lot of things over the course of time. I'm one of those people that I didn't place a lot of importance on college. I placed a lot more importance on job experience, and I've done a lot of different things over the years. I've done everything from a computer programmer to a police officer to a detention officer in the juvenile community, and then I've been a pastor. I've been a counselor. I've worked in the car business for a long time, both in the service departments and the sales departments, in a lot of different areas as far as that goes, but my journey in HVAC started about 2016, 2017. I was able to learn this business and then bring all the aspects of what I've learned through mistakes and challenges, of which that I've observed other companies fall into and really try to create a company that's avoiding those on purpose, and that's kind of where our journey has led us to today.
Speaker 2:
Awesome, awesome. Can you think of any myths or misconceptions that are out there about HVAC that you want to shed some light on?
Speaker 3:
So my biggest pet peeve at this point is in 99% of the cases, you don't need to clean your ducks. So there's so much chatter out there right now about duck cleaning, duck cleaning this and that and the other, and what it is. It's a lot of companies that are preying on your fear of germs. The reality is is that the dirty parts of your system are supposed to be dirty.
Speaker 1:
The clean.
Speaker 3:
Parts of your system will always be clean. If you keep a primary filter in place, in most cases your duct work is going to be satisfactory. I work on duct work for a living. I cut systems open that are 35 and 40 years old, and I'm somewhat of a mechanic not so much, but you'll understand what I mean in just a second. But I would eat my sandwich off the inside of that duck because it's really not that bad. So at the end of the day, there are some reasons why you would need to do some duck cleaning.
Speaker 3:
It might be post a construction project in your home where the general contractors didn't pay close attention to the cleanliness of the space. Or in some cases they like to use the ducks that are in the floor as trash cans as opposed to a dustpan. That would be a lot more commensurate for that activity. Or they'll leave the system on while they're painting and standing drywall and the whole thing all the while it's sucking all that stuff into the system, and then you're going to have problems with that.
Speaker 3:
Moving forward, a duct cleaning system company can't clean everything that needs to be cleaned because they're not licensed to be able to put their hands inside the actual blower cabinet, where the blower wheel itself would need to be cleaned as well. So who you choose for that needs to be a very specialized contractor for that and it's not going to be your fly by night companies. Quite honestly, an appropriate duct cleaning, just for a saying so, say, should cost you somewhere between $110 and $130 per duct, if it's done properly and it's done by a reputable company. There's companies that are out there trying to do your whole house for $299 and, quite honestly, the amount of work that needs to happen to do that correctly and not cause damage to your ducks and actually provide you with a cleaning is not going to happen at the $299 level. Yeah, that's one of my little myths or misnomers in our industry.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, can you talk a little bit about the importance of maintenance and kind of what your company does in terms of providing annual maintenance for your clients?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, that's a great question. Thanks for asking, stacey. I'm a very big proponent of maintenance. Coming from the car industry, we drive our cars around. It was really the only other mechanical piece of equipment that we can relate to. But you wouldn't drive your car around for 10, 20, 50, 100,000 miles without changing the oil, maybe putting some tires on some brakes, but having a mechanic regularly look at it to make sure that that piece of equipment that's responsible for you and your family to drive around good heavens Atlanta, and keep you safe. Okay, you're going to want someone to look at it to make sure that that vehicle is going to last you a good long time.
Speaker 3:
A piece of air conditioning equipment is, in fact, a mechanical piece of equipment. It has components on it that are designed to fail prematurely, to sacrifice itself for the sake of a much larger component. Our goal is to catch those items when they're in the propensity or the possibility of failure, or when they're getting ready to fail because our measurement tools can tell us that and try to resolve those issues before they cause damage down, run to other major components, which is causing premature failure of your systems. Most of the companies that are out there, especially your big box companies are trying to get you to replace your system in eight to 10 years. I've been to customers houses recently and several times where the system is still under warranty and they've had five companies come out and give them proposals for replacements. And that's just. That's just not the right approach and how how things should be done. If you have a system that's eight to ten years old, it should still be in good working condition if Keypoint number one, it was installed correctly that's a big key component and, number two, it was maintained correctly.
Speaker 3:
If your system is found outside of a condition of maintenance, you may be outside of your condition of your warranty. There you may be, you may, you may fail a warranty compliance check and the company who Manufactured the unit may deem the failure as a lack of maintenance. And and do that now. That doesn't happen very often and I don't want that to be a fear tactic by any means.
Speaker 3:
But at the end of the day, that maintenance component is is what's going to potentially push your system's longevity past that 15 year mark and our, our hopes, past the 20 year mark and even past the 25 year mark, if we can do our very best to ensure that the system is always operating in a in a intended Operating condition, so the system needs to operate in a way that it's supposed to. So those are the things that we're checking when we're out and doing maintenance. So one of the things that we do, because we believe so much in maintenance, we offer maintenance at a very low cost. We want it to be affordable. I don't want to feel like I'm charging you twice For the fact of coming in and you allowing me an opportunity to come in and earn your business and Look at your system and ensure that it has longevity to it.
Speaker 2:
That's great. That's great. Um, it sounds like you enjoy what you do for a living, but what do you like to do for fun?
Speaker 3:
So I'm a big water guy, was originally from Tampa, florida, so I've grown up around lakes and oceans and all that kind of stuff and our home is located near Lake Altoona in Aquarth, georgia, and and we just we enjoy doing water things. I enjoy being outside and I just really enjoy being a dad. I enjoy weekend time. We don't do a lot of weekend work and I'm intentional about that for two reasons. Number one my team needs rest.
Speaker 3:
Number two most situations with air conditioning, if we're really being honest, are not an emergency and, as a company owner that is predicated on integrity, I'd rather be honest with you a lot of times.
Speaker 3:
A night in a hotel is cheaper Than the extra expense that you're gonna pay, the difference in cost between our regular rates on a weekend, our our overtime rates on the weekend versus our regular rates during the the week. So we don't do a whole lot of on-call. We do in it if there is a legitimate Emergency and we want to be there when we need to be. But we really try not to do that because, again, I want to be a dad. I want my team To be dads to their children and to be with with with their families on the weekend and rest, so that when they do come to your home it's not someone who's upset at the world because their boss doesn't appreciate them and they don't feel like that, they can get a moment to breathe for themselves, because they're constantly in some truck, because someone's demanding them to go to a customer, because they might could make an extra buck to take advantage of that customer, and I just don't do business that way.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, no, that's, and that's important, and I haven't heard anyone put it that way about the hotel room before. But it makes it makes absolute sense, right? Why not? Why not?
Speaker 3:
literally, the amount of cost it would take to pay the difference between a regular call and an overtime call is More in most cases, with most companies, than one night at a hotel in a slight little displacement of your time.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, no, good point, good point. Can you think about any challenges or obstacles you've had since you guys started the business in 2020?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, quite honestly, one of the biggest challenges is getting people to consider more than just price. Not everything in our world should be predicated on price and, quite honestly, if price is the only consideration that you're considering in context of making the third, fourth or fifth largest purchase that you will ever make in your life, which is an air conditioning system, then you're really not considering the things that are actually going to be a benefit to you, valuable to you long term. If you're only looking for the lowest cost of what it is and you're not asking the right questions why is it lower? Why is it that you're able to do that? Why is it that one company who buys their equipment from the same vendor that another company can and there's two different prices? Well, at the end of the day, in order to do what we do correctly and there is a correct way and a not correct way to do what we do it has an expense that's associated with that. There are materials that you have to buy to ensure that the system will operate correctly and that it's again. It's set off from day one to operate in its intended design.
Speaker 3:
If the system operates outside of its intended design, a couple of things are going to happen. Number one it's not going to operate as efficiently. Number two it's not going to last as long and I'm not going to put my name or, in this case, my son's name on a piece of equipment that was installed incorrectly, because, although we offer a three year warranty with all of our replacement proposals and we offer that at no additional charge at five years, if a customer calls me and says, hey, when you installed this system, you did this wrong, and I go out and I perceive it as wrong, I'm going to fix it, Because my reputation and what it is that we do matters more to me than the dollars and cents that it would take to go and make it right for a customer, because that's the right thing to do.
Speaker 3:
That's how I was raised and that's how I run my business.
Speaker 2:
That's awesome, awesome. A wise person once said to me good things aren't cheap and cheap things aren't good. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3:
It's good, fast and cheap. You can't ever have all three.
Speaker 2:
Right Anything else that you'd like our listeners to know about your business that you haven't had a chance to share?
Speaker 3:
At this point there's so much to the story it's hard to tell in just a short period of time. At the end of the day, we want to earn your business. I don't want to take from anybody. That's not how I've started this business, it's not how I will grow the business and that's not how it will grow itself. And at the end of the day, we want to come out, we want to do the right thing. We want to ensure that you have confidence in your choice as a contractor.
Speaker 3:
Sometimes we tell people no when a customer is asking me to do something that's not in their best interest and it's not going to do for them what they want to do.
Speaker 3:
Even though it would make me money to appease that customer, I'd rather tell them no because I don't want to participate in something that's the wrong thing to do.
Speaker 3:
But ultimately we're wanting to build relationships with folks with that trust barrier in place so that they know that we really have an invested interest in them, their family and in doing the right thing for them. And, as a result, the hope is that they would share our story with somebody else and give that peace of mind to get somebody else as a result of the experience that they had with us. We're not perfect no one's perfect but what I can promise you is this is, if I know that there's an issue and I know that there's a problem, and I know there's a step that happened that may have been a misstep, I can assure you that I'm going to do everything within my power to include going myself to make sure that, at the end of the time, that it's done correctly, it's done appropriately I'm not double charging anyone for anything and that it's going to last as long as it should last for whatever repair that we've said and we've agreed to do.
Speaker 2:
Wow, can you talk a little bit about maybe this areas that you serve and where folks can find you?
Speaker 3:
Sure. So we predominantly serve the Northwest Corridor. So we're doing Bartow, cherokee, cobb, fulton counties pretty much in those areas as far as that goes. We do some outlier ones, but again, it's all predicated on relationship. You know, we've grown significantly because of network marketing and business partners that have allowed us to grow with them. And when people that are in relationship with us call us and say, hey, I have someone that's we're in relationship with, would you go and serve them? That's where we come in and say yes, if they're important to you, then they're important to us and we want to serve them in that capacity. So there are special case scenarios that come in play and we do that. But for the most part we live in that Northwest Corridor as far as that goes, and that's a really highly dense area as far as what we're able to provide as far as service in that area.
Speaker 2:
Awesome, awesome. And where can folks find you? And to share some contact info with us.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, absolutely so. You can reach us a couple of things. So an email address would be info at BrodyHVACcom. You can catch us on the web, brodyhvaccom. You can catch us on the phone by text or by phone call at 404-458-1975., and you can check us out on Facebook and Instagram and all the fun things that are out there. We do a lot of fun videos and good information for you just to do that. So go out to social media, give us a like. We would love to stay in touch with you in those ways as well.
Speaker 2:
Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Chas.
Speaker 3:
Of course. Thanks so much.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
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