FXBG Neighbors Podcast
Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast
FXBG Neighbors Podcast
EP #98 From HVAC To Community Impact
Ever wonder how a local HVAC shop grows into a multi-trade service company without getting swallowed by private equity? We sit down with OHA’s John Berardino to unpack a strategy built on patience, culture, and customer trust—plus a few myths about the home services business that may surprise you. From honoring a founder who still visits customers to adding plumbing, chimney, fireplaces, and roofing, John explains how OHA scaled methodically, opened a second location to serve Northern Virginia, and resisted the temptation to chase fast money or heavy debt.
We dig into the consolidation wave across HVAC and plumbing, why roll-ups can disrupt technician culture, and how a family-owned approach can actually be a competitive advantage. John offers a candid look at thin industry margins—often around three percent—and what that means for pricing, technician pay, and long-term sustainability. If you’ve ever wondered why a “cheap” quote can lead to poor outcomes, this conversation connects the dots between healthy margins, well-treated teams, and reliable service for homeowners across the Fredericksburg region and beyond.
John also shares an action-first mindset for entrepreneurs: plan enough to move, then solve problems in sequence. He brings that to life with the story behind GiveTaxFree.org, a nonprofit crowdfunding platform built to enable tax-deductible donations for people in real need. Along the way, we talk about hiring during a trades shortage, where OHA plans to improve before adding electrical, and the personal routines—family time and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu—that keep him grounded.
If you care about local business, the future of the trades, or building something durable without losing your soul, this conversation is for you. Listen, share it with a friend, and leave a review to help more neighbors discover the show.
John Berardino
OHA HVAC Plumbing Chimney & Fireplaces
help@fixmyair.com
+1 540-899-6045
3341 Shannon Park Dr, Fredericksburg, VA, United States, Virginia
This is the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Dori Stewart.
Speaker 3:Welcome back to another episode of the FXBG Neighbors Podcast, where we share the stories of our favorite local brands. I'm excited to introduce you to my guest today. We've got John Berardino joining us. He is with OHA HVAC Plumbing Chimney and Fireplaces. John, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker:Thanks, Dori. It's great to be on with you.
Speaker 3:I'm excited to dive in and learn all about you and learn about your business. So let's start there. Share with us a little bit about OHA.
unknown:Thank you.
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, uh OHA has been a stable of the Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, really northern Virginia area, for 30 years. I've been involved with OHA for the past seven years. And uh a friend of mine, uh Fred Olet, who was a fraternity brother of mine at Radford, uh, his father owned the business and actually still does today. We're partners, and there are a number of other uh partners in the business, but he came to me and said, My dad's getting a little older and is thinking about retiring, and you know, he'd like to sell the business. And we own a finance company that finances churches all around the country. And we were looking for, you know, businesses to buy to diversify and you know, give us a little security over uncertainties in the financial markets. And so we thought this was a good opportunity. And when we bought it, it was a smaller business and just concentrating on HVAC. And and uh we thought Mr. Fred was going to retire, but gratefully and thankfully, he did not. He's still with us today. He's still his main thing is out visiting customers, making them happy. And he does a really great job with that. Um, and so uh yeah, we've grown the business and and we've added some some lines. Uh, we've added plumbing, chimney, fireplaces, and and roofing. And uh we've added a second location in northern Virginia to to give us a little bit of ability to service our customers up that way, too.
Speaker 3:So well, congratulations. That's big growth. I mean, seven years seems like a long time, but it's not a long time for that much growth. Another location, adding additional services. So congratulations. That's that's a big deal.
Speaker:Well, thank you. I appreciate that, Dory.
Speaker 3:And 30 years in business is a huge milestone. It's not very often that you hear about a business being around for 30 years. So that's a really uh really big accomplishment. And I absolutely love that you still have the original founder involved. And to hear that he still goes out to customers' homes, that's pretty cool. I love that.
Speaker:Well, the next time we do one of these, I'll have to bring him on. He is really a wonderful man, but he's funny. Uh, he's super intelligent and uh just a great guy to be around, really a personal mentor of mine. And uh, you know, when I came into this business, the home service business, I didn't know anything about it. Didn't know anything. Didn't know how to use the thermostat in my own home, really. And uh so he's been a joy to work with and a wealth of knowledge. And you know, I'm excited for the future for our little business and hoping it'll continue to grow and keep making our customers happy.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about you. I imagine that this has been quite a challenge, and and it sounds like you really are enjoying it and the learning curve of going into an industry. You know, you're in the finance world and and working with churches, and now to go into a home services company. Talk to me a little bit about the challenges and uh what drives you to uh take on such a big, you know, change in uh industry.
Speaker:Well, I've been an entrepreneur my whole life, really. I've owned all sorts of different kinds of businesses, and some have done great and and others have not done so great. And so uh, you know, I'm always looking for a challenge, but um uh, you know, I have partners in the finance business, and so we discuss things and determine what we're gonna do next. And we thought this was a good field to get into for a number of reasons. I don't want to bore all your listeners with details. Some of them are things like a shortage of uh available uh you know professionals within the field, and so within this industry, there's a shortage of people that are entering the field compared to the number that are retiring, and so uh, and there's also an accumulation of these types of businesses within the industry, meaning that there are hedge funds and large players that like to buy up the small and medium-sized businesses. And that's not really our exit strategy. This is a long-term play for us. So uh we know that when you have consolidation of this nature within a specific industry like we're in, that those consolidators tend to make big changes to the way the businesses were run. And this tends to irritate the professionals, the tradespeople who are within that industry. And so our thought process is you know, stay family-owned, stay private, and continue to grow by providing a great work environment that you know other people want to come and help build, uh, and just take on the big guys slowly, safely, over time, uh, and do it with as little debt as possible.
unknown:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I love that. It's a very strategic approach. Yeah, no, it's it's very interesting because I know that home services is a very um lucrative industry, and you're right, there are more people retiring than there are coming um on board. And so I imagine that created a very big opportunity for you, but also talk to me about the challenge of that because then are you having issues with finding good employees?
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, you absolutely do. And and I'll just I'll correct you on one small thing you said. Uh, you know, you said that the industry is profitable. As a whole, the industry is actually very marginally profitable. The average operator around the country has a net profit margin of three percent a year. So the average operator that owns a little plumbing business or a little HVAC company uh, you know, really is making very, very little money with a million dollars in sales, they might be putting $30,000 in their pocket. So it really is a difficult industry to make money at. And part of that uh is because you know, the labor rates for the industry are extremely high. If you're you know, just for any uh young people out there, if you're looking to get into a field, I'd encourage you to look at the trades, you know, electricians, plumbers, HVAC technicians, chimney sweeps, any of these kind of trades are great to get into right now. Uh the technicians are paid very, very well, they're treated very well, and um it's a a good field to get into. So uh, you know, yeah, as far as it goes, really, that's one of the things that I would say is it isn't as profitable as people would think it is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, interesting. Thank you for for busting that misconception.
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's so interesting. So tell me, what is something that maybe you wish people knew about your business?
Speaker:Well, I don't know about our business in particular. We service, you know, a large area. So from Washington, DC, uh up to about King's Dominion, then out past Culpeper, a little further out than Culpeper, and a little further out than King George. So running north to south, east to west, we s we cover a large area. And uh we do most things for your home other than electrical. Eventually we'd like to get into electrical, but you know, we do one thing at a time and make sure we're doing it correctly before we move on. And we've got some work to do on some of our trade lines to improve them.
Speaker 3:Okay. As an entrepreneur, if there were listeners who are thinking about starting their own business, what advice would you give them?
Speaker:You know, um no, I I can make it succinct, but I want to be I want to be careful.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker:You have to plan enough to know your first few steps, but you don't want to plan so much that you talk yourself out of a good idea. You don't want to make it seem as though it's going to be too difficult. Um, I'll give you an example. We run givetaxfree.org. It is a nonprofit that is like GoFundMe. And we've run this for nine years, and we don't make any money from it, but it's raised absolutely millions of dollars primarily for people uh with cancer, lots of kids with cancer and those kind of things. It's like GoFundMe. You go on there, you set up a campaign, and other people donate to it, and it has all the social tools to share and all that.
Speaker 1:Well, interesting.
Speaker:Not to make money, it doesn't make money, it cost us money to get it going. Now, of course, it takes care of itself, but in the beginning, we had to spend a lot of money to get it up and running. Well, the idea came to me because I had a couple of friends who sent me campaigns for themselves or for people that were important to them that needed money. Okay, and these were not, hey, I need money because I want to take my kids to Disney World. These were I want money because somebody has cancer. Um and I thought to myself, why am I not getting a tax deduction for helping this person? You know, why is it that when I make a donation, you know, if I make a donation to, you know, a cancer fund or something, then I get a tax write-off. Well, why is it when I make a donation to my friend who's in need with a legitimate concern, then I don't get a tax deduction? So I've I looked into it and I quickly realized that GoFundMe is a for-profit entity. And I said to myself, boy, this seems like something there should be an equivalent for a nonprofit for. And so I started doing research and I realized there wasn't. So the point is this to go from concept to launch was about three months. Well, if I had sat down and said to myself, I don't know how I'm going to get the money from the people, right? I don't know how I'm going to get the money to the people. I don't know how these structures work. We do loans for churches across the US, but I don't deal with any of these kinds of things, right? I would have talked myself out of it. So generally, the way that I work is when I have a good idea, I put my left foot in front of my right and I do the first thing. And then I put my right foot in front of my left and I do the next thing. And then when I run into a brick wall, I figure out how I'm going to solve that problem. I don't conceptually think to myself, with some grand plan ahead of time, what are all the problems I'm going to have to launch this business? I just say to myself, is it a good idea? Do I like it? Do I think I can be successful with it? And what kind of risk am I taking? How much money is this going to cost me? And if I'm wrong and I lose it all, where does that leave me? And so that's the advice I would give is if you have a good idea, put one foot in front of the other, get to starting on it. When you run into a roadblock, and you will figure out how to overcome it. Don't worry about figuring out how to do everything from day one. It's too overwhelming.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker:And that fits in with my personality a little bit because I am a bit of a risk taker.
Speaker 3:That's really good advice. If if you think too far ahead, you'll suffer from analysis paralysis. And clearly it's working for you, and you have become very successful. So that's really great advice. Thank you for that. So let's switch gears a little bit.
Speaker:I hope it helps somebody listen to me. Oh, yeah. If anybody goes broke listening to my advice, listen, this is unscripted. You know, I'm not, I take no responsibility. I promise you, my ideas. I've had terrible ones also that I thought were great. So, you know, yes. Listen to me at your own risk.
Speaker 3:Right, right. Well, thank you. It's still great advice. I appreciate it. And so switching gears a little bit. Clearly, you work very hard. And so I want to know when you're not working, what are you doing for fun?
Speaker:Well, I've got uh three kids two are in college. One is at tech, one is at Radford, and then I've got a son, Jack, and he's still in high school. So whenever he'll do something with me, which is uh sadly very rarely now, uh I will absolutely take any time I can with him. And when the kids are home, I I like to spend time with them whenever they can. And uh my big love outside of work is jujitsu, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, which I've done for I don't know, 26 years now. At the lab Mixed Martial Arts uh in Fredericksburg, Virginia, under Professor Chad LeBron. Don't know if you know him or not, but he's a wonderful man. Great business, great school, great kids program.
Speaker 3:Nice.
Speaker:And that's uh that's my big love. I don't do it nearly as often as I should, as evidenced by my pop belly. But I am getting older. And I when you're older, you get to have more excuses that younger people can't complain about.
Speaker 3:So they're amazing. Well, John, if the listeners want to connect with you, if they want to learn from you or learn more from OHA, where's the best place for them to find you?
Speaker:Yeah, you can visit OHA online at www.fixmyair.com. I don't know if you have to say the www anymore, but anyway, fixmyair.com, like my air conditioning is broken. Um and then uh, you know, uh give tax-free is givtaxfree.org.org. And then uh Griffin Capital Funding is um churchloans.net.
Speaker 3:Nice.
Speaker:And I'd love to love to connect with anybody that needs help in any of those kind of things.
Speaker 3:So amazing. Amazing. Well, John, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today and sharing all your wisdom with us. I appreciate it.
Speaker:Well, I really appreciate you too, Dori. Thanks so much for doing it, and thanks for including me. And hope you have a great rest of the day.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to FXBG NeighborsPodcast.com.